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THE LIFE STORY 



OF 



BROTHER TOMMY" 



Told by 

- KE - KE 




Class 
Book. 







W .- " 



Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




TOMMY F. ANDERSON 
("SCOTTY KID") 



SCOTTY KID 

The Life Story of " Brother Tommy 

Told by 

"LI-KE-KE" f^mA- 

w 

Godfathered by 
FATHER ENDEAVOR CLARK 



59 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



-BV4-T5 5" 



Copyright, 1917, by 
T. F. ANDERSON 



AUG 24 1917 



CLA473705 



CONTENTS 

chapter page 

Introduction 7 

Godfathering of Father En- 
deavor Clark 11 

I. His Start in Life 15 

II. "Con. No. 2173" 46 

III. How They Get Dope 54 

IV. Prison Fare and Discipline 61 

V. Good Things in the Pen 83 

VI. Free from the Law 90 

VII. Traveling 97 

VIII. Drawbacks to Bumdom 114 

IX. The Birth of Brother Tommy . . . 121 

X. A Dope Fiend under a House. . . . 139 

XL Restitution 146 

XII. A "Geed" Neck 154 

XIII. As an Evangelist 163 

XIV. An Interrupted Trip to Scotland. 172 
XV. Brother and Sister Anderson ... 177 

XVI. In Honolulu 184 

XVII. A Scholar Too! 189 

XVIII. From Pahoa to Hakalau 192 

L'Envoi 212 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Tommy F. Anderson ("Scotty Kid") 

Frontispiece ^ 
Facing Page 
Group of Spanish and Portuguese at 



Pepeekeo 68 



Pahoa Mission 68 



The Anderson Party in Hilo 100 

Ready for Service 100 l 

Audience at Dedication of the Spanish 

Mission at Hakalau, November 5, 1916 198 * 

Chapel for Spanish Work at Hakalau, 

Dedicated November 5, 1916 198 ^ 



INTRODUCTION 

There are many enthusiasts who look for 
a new science which is to be called eugenics. 
That it is in sight as yet few believe. It will 
expect to demonstrate at least the possibility 
of building up a race of mankind by follow- 
ing the laws that apply to the successful 
breeding of lower animals. 

The analysis of the word is significant. 
Eugenics calls for a birth under favorable 
conditions in an up direction. 

The life story of Brother Tommy calls for 
quite a different modus and direction. It 
would never have been written, were it not to 
impress the old story that the real science 
is "Anothengenics" — "birth from above." 
Moreover, it dares to affirm that even un- 
favorable conditions are in a large degree 
negligible. Given a real "birth from above," 
and the superhuman element transforms 
anything it touches, starting, if need be, from 
the very lowest stratum of human life. 

Eugenics lays particular stress on a class 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

called the unfit, which must be eliminated 
and prevented. It talks of the Jukes family, 
and society's right, as well as duty, to rid 
itself of such, 

Anothengenics points to One who hung on 
a tree who is able to save to the uttermost — 
even the unfittest of the unfit. An incredible 
remedy — this looking and living — like the 
foolishness of preaching, and yet there are 
untold armies of twice-born men to substan- 
tiate it. Just one Jerry McAuley, with a 
life well-nigh ended in bitter degradation, is 
able to roll up such a glorious posterity on 
earth and in heaven as to dwarf into com- 
parative insignificance the blighting influ- 
ence of the mother of the Jukes family. 
When a genuine heaven-birth takes place, 
bigger towns than Sychar in Samaria are 
turned upside down, five husbands and one 
paramour notwithstanding. God, what 
glorious tidings for the "unfit" ! 

It serves here but to call attention to the 
irreconcilable conflict between the two the- 
ories of race betterment and to the signifi- 
cant element of direction. We must bear in 



INTRODUCTION 9 

mind that it has always been the ambition 
of the human race to rise by its own efforts, 
and whereas the verdict of history proves the 
hope a vain one, and that "our help cometh 
from above," still does the pride of man 
aspire to a godhood unhindered and unaided 
by any but himself. There are not lacking 
those who affirm that on this world-old issue 
are to meet in final conflict the great con- 
tending forces for the supremacy of this 
planet. 

Meanwhile, this Brother Tommy story 
aims to be a genuine portrayal of facts only 
relating to his "birth from above" and its 
far-reaching consequences. Not to be tire- 
some as to this peculiar downward tendency 
of the "new" birth, nevertheless it must be 
confessed that the wide difference of the after 
stories of "twice-born" people may be ac- 
counted for by the varying degrees in which 
the divine element "gets down" and envelops 
all the springs of action. 

To get at Brother Tommy while he was 
the "Scotty Kid" God must needs come 
down very low into human experience, by the 



10 INTRODUCTION 

will and consent of the Kid himself. If the 
story does not prove that, it is as worthless 
as a romance; proving that, it ranks with 
other truth and should be worth the telling. 

"Li-ke-ke." 



GODFATHERING OF FATHER 
ENDEAVOR CLARK 

"Though your sins be as scarlet, they 
shall be as white as snow; though they be red 
like crimson, they shall be as wool." No 
better sermon on this text was ever written 
than the life of Scotty Kid. Heredity and 
environment did nothing for him. Accord- 
ing to all the laws of eugenics, he should have 
died in the slums near which he was born. 
Many another man, with every advantage of 
birth and breeding, has ended his life where 
Scotty, with every disadvantage of birth and 
breeding, began his. The reason is plain. 
They were once-born men, Scotty was twice- 
born. 

Such a book is a marvelous quickener of 

the faith. If we are tempted to believe that 

the age of miracles is past, that there will 

never be another day of Pentecost, that the 

era of old-fashioned conviction of sin and 

conversion from sin ended with the death of 

Finney, Nettleton, and Moody, let us go to 

11 



12 GODFATHERING 

a rescue mission in any great city and listen 
to the testimony of former drunkards and 
harlots; see their clean, wholesome faces, 
exchanged for bleary eyes and dirt-blotched 
skin ; note their good clothes, exchanged for 
rags, and we shall be sure that there is one 
power in the world that can conquer habit, 
appetite, and environment ; that there is such 
a thing as conversion ; in a word, that Christ 
is mightier than the devil. 

The same certainty of the power of God, 
of the transforming might of a Saviour's 
love, can be gained by reading the story of 
Brother Tommy, 

Such a book is particularly needed in cir- 
cles where conversion is supposed to be 
merely a matter of culture or nurture, and 
where joining the church means only getting 
into good society. Here too is found en- 
couragement and hope for the conscious 
sinner. If God can make a drunkard, a dope 
fiend, a tramp, a thief, a " jail-bird" into a 
successful and devoted missionary, what can 
he not do for any individual soul ! 

The happy and vivacious way in which the 



GODFATHERING 13 

book is written makes the old phrase "As in- 
teresting as a novel" seem a tame description 
of the story of the transformation of Scotty 
Kid into Brother Tommy. I believe there 
are in this book possibilities of untold good. 

Francis E. Clark. 



CHAPTER I 

HIS START IN LIFE 

To look at Brother Tommy now it is easy 
to see why he was called "Scotty." He has 
the light blue eye and the facial contour of 
a Scot. And, indeed — since he is somewhat 
undersized — the term "kid" was by no means 
inapplicable. In truth, the world of bum- 
dom is marvelously accurate in its nomen- 
clature; its very jargon of a language, fol- 
lowing all the laws of human speech, is vivid 
and meaningful. 

But the name "Scotty Kid" no longer be- 
comes the man who is known in certain reli- 
gious circles from Texas to China as 
"Brother Tommy." It would be a fascinat- 
ing business (but one that would kill this 
story deader than a peace proposal in these 
piping times of submarines) to inquire what 
had "got into" the "Scotty Kid"— or what 
had gone out of him. Any sort of the "yegg- 
man" "pussy tail," or "gunman" of the old 

15 



16 SCOTTY KID 

days would know "right off the bat" that 
the purposeful face — rather grim at times — 
no longer belongs to "Seotty Kid." In fact 
—and here is a good joke on some one, per- 
haps his wife — a certain photograph sent by 
a jailer and declared to be that of Convict 
No. 2173, under an alias selected by the same 
"Seotty Kid," was repudiated by Mrs. 
Anderson as not that of her husband, and 
we won't blame her. 

And yet the "Kid" must have been a win- 
some young daredevil. We have had just the 
Th P « least bit of a fear that his tempest- 
cination uous career might prove a wee bit 
of the too attractive for general reading 

as to moral effect. Right in this 
connection it should be said that "Brother 
Tommy" himself had no desire to elevate 
into attractiveness the bum or the criminal. 
He knew perfectly well that it is perilous 
for even an advanced "Brother Tommy" to 
revel in the droll escapades of Seotty Kid. 
There is a charm even yet that lingers in the 
trickery, holdups, and get-aways in that not 
too distant kidhood. Perhaps it were not 



HIS START IN LIFE 17 

well to open up those sealed chambers with- 
out due precaution as to contagion. That 
was Tommy's idea. There is something in 
it too, for there was a fellow we knew, a 
reformed man, who seemed so tremendously 
tickled over the recounting of his roaring old 
sprees that we were afraid for him, and told 
him so. The tumble was "coming to him/' 
as the boys say. He got it soon and severely. 

We confess to have had a strong tempta- 
tion, though, to address this book to boys, 
An and then we were going to call it 

Abandoned "Bother Tommy, and How He 
TitIe Won His <R.' " It would have 

been a bit of a "f ake," perhaps, to attempt to 
make the boy reader imagine that here prob- 
ably was a school athletic story with a 
sweater to be adorned with the school initial 
— and all by prowess. However, it is a more 
wondrous business and infinitely more cap- 
tivating than bucking the line, this watching 
a man who was the worst sort of a "bother" 
become a "brother." 

So the simple title "Scotty Kid" holds 
out lure enough for us, happy if there may 



18 SCOTTY KID 

be revealed at least the fact of a miracle, 
though the how of it we surely may not know. 

The portion of his life before he was 
Scotty Kid is by no means negligible. 

You cannot ignore a Scotch mother and 
a Scotch home, the more so that some of the 
Stepping- happenings there so plainly con- 
stones tributed to his poor start in 
illiteracy America. To be sent to buy beer, 
ale, and spirits at the corner gro- 
cery might be matter of course enough and 
not so harmful; but if a boy stops and 
samples the goods, keeps doing it right 
along, some community has a job cut out 
for it. There was plenty of good stock be- 
hind him. His father and uncles were sea 
captains, and the boys must have inherited 
sound constitutions to have stood up to the 
experiences they had. 

We are chiefly concerned, in those early 
days in Scotland, to note that he had very 
little of the common-school education that 
the state provides, and through no fault of 
the state. What they call truancy over 
there we were wont to designate "playing 



HIS START IN LIFE 19 

hookey," and it is probable that Tommy 
was an adept in avoiding intrusion on his 
mental forest reserve. There was very little 
cutting of even the underbrush. The trick 
of lying in wait for the boy who carried the 
note home from the teacher, and the "swip- 
ing" of it, is probably as old as ancient 
Babylon. We cannot make much signifi- 
cance out of that. But of this we feel sure. 
The destruction of the king's English attrib- 
utable to Tommy from that time to this 
very day bears distinct relation to the "play- 
ing hookey" episode; certainly, it is in no 
wise to be charged to the Scotch school- 
marms. 

We (Brother Tommy and the writer) 
were discussing this matter of bad grammar 
The Merit recently, just ordinary gross vio- 
inBad lations of common English, and 

Grammar we j^^ a g ree( j ^j^ there was no 

signal virtue in it — a man could be a good 
and useful man without such. There was 
just a suspicion in our minds (as we talked) 
that before an audience of a certain class of 
men, distorted plurals, abnormal past tenses 



20 SCOTTY KID 

might be a bit welcome — might, indeed, put 
the hearers at their ease. We finally con- 
cluded, however, that there was very little in 
it. The Western politician who attempted 
to make capital out of the fact that he wore 
no socks may have made a bit of a "hit" with 
the farmers at first, but maturer considera- 
tion robbed the advertising scheme of its 
value. The possession of socks or their lack 
is a trifle, almost immaterial. More rele- 
vant than socks surely is it to speak one's 
own tongue correctly, and it ought to be no 
special road to favor to vaunt one's ignor- 
ance or independence of rules of speech. No, 
Brother Tommy says when he gets the time 
he is going to go after English, even as he is 
now pursuing — but we will get to that later. 
But if the start in Scotland was not pro- 
pitious (we should have added that he just 
Crime's escaped arrest and imprisonment 
Call to the for poaching, on his promise to go 
Immigrant to California), that in America 
was far worse. His father died quite early 
in his life, and as many of the brothers had 
already gone on to America it was not unnat- 



HIS START IN LIFE 21 

ural that Tommy should drift to the West 
to the care (?) of his elder brother. The 
beginnings there but emphasize the perils 
so often pointed out to us, besetting the 
paths of the young aliens who come into 
America, It is quite unavoidable here that 
we refer to the brother. He was a saloon 
man and gambler — to be more exact he 
promoted gambling more than he gambled. 
To be sure, Tommy says that on one 
evening's play his brother once won a very 
good house and lot. Again a twelve-acre 
orange grove was a part of his winnings. 
This must have made an impression on 
Tommy, for he tells us that each of the trees 
on that ranch produced about fifteen boxes 
of oranges, and of such quality as to take a 
prize (first) at the Chicago World's Fair. 

Now, imagine a boy of fifteen in that sort 
of atmosphere. He was early tutored that 
to work was demeaning. He found that all 
of his brother's friends "got by" in affluence, 
without having to work. They told him that 
it was a matter of brains. 

His brother had taunted him a great deal 



22 SCOTTY KID 

on his greenness. The boy had been incau- 

_ . . T tious enough to admit that when 
Which &..'.. 

Easier— he landed in New York the nice, 
to Work or smooth wooden toothpicks had 
seemed to him things intended to 
be eaten, and there were doubtless many ad- 
missions of a like nature. However, in com- 
mon with the rest of humanity, he did not en- 
joy being laughed at, and early formed the 
resolution to "show" his brother that his 
provincialism was not much more than 
freckle-deep. Meanwhile he was getting his 
opportunities. He was freely admitted to 
the "games" his brother was running. It 
was his business to take the bags of coin to 
the roulette men and faro bankers — osten- 
sibly running the games under their own 
names, but really in the employ of Anderson 
senior. He was the only boy allowed on 
the premises and was thoroughly acquainted 
with the way the mechanism was "fixed." 
He "bucked the tiger" himself (though not 
the roulette kind), and appears to have won 
considerable money in some of the all-night 
houses, where not everyone was admitted. 



HIS START IN LIFE 23 

Shooting craps and playing poker were, as 
might be expected, a part of his education. 

The underworld does not look nice when 
you peer down under the cover. There may 
illusions b e some glamour about the life of 
of the a gambler, for example, but it is 

Half -Word g 0ne w h en you know him. A 

gambler is not a gambler, and only that, 
neither does a saloon man or "yeggman" 
stick (as a rule) to just that particular line 
of exploiting his fellow man. The whole 
wretched matter of vice is inextricably mixed 
up. Tommy tells of one individual who 
got most of his money to start on from a 
legacy left him by a prostitute. Aye, and 
that most of the men he knew were in league 
with fallen women, many of them deriving 
their income or a part of it from houses of 
ill fame. 

And now we find him in a new role. Did 
we say that he was part Irish? To forget 
s , that would be to lose a genealog- 
Education, ical line on him. Come to think 

Primarily f it, it is hard to see which 
of the Feet . • i i . • . • j 

national characteristics predom- 



24 SCOTTY KID 

inate. Perhaps, after all, it was his name 
that won him his sobriquet "Scotty." Now 
he needs must learn a profession, and he is 
fortunate in being Scotch and Irish. A 
stage dancer has taken him in hand, and 
his ambition is to kick and clog his way into 
that portion of his affluence that does not 
come to him still easier. This was before 
the days of the various "trots" and it was 
alone — as a soloist if you will — that he was 
to draw down some weekly emolument. So 
he learned the Horn Pipe, Irish Reels and 
the Highland Fling, together with such 
song-and"dance specialties as were popular 
in the dance halls and saloons. It was no 
easy business, this tutoring of the feet. 
There is a vivid picture in my mind of the 
early attempts at the house of "Poker Davis" 
to get the steps. But all this noise and vibra- 
tion annoyed the same Poker D., and so a 
shed was made in the back yard. There one 
hour per day at least there was hard work 
for the fellow who aspired to escape work. 
It meant soreness of limb, rubbing down with 
coal oil, but it ended with fancy tights and a 



HIS START IN LIFE 25 

bit of glamour. And there was competition 
with other Scotch and Irish laddies at pri- 
vate homes, at rooster fights and bulldog 
fights. This meant a free dispensing of 
drinks, but the boy had long since become 
used to that. 

Here's a song of the times : 

Good-by, Mike; good-by, Pat; 

Good-by, Kate and Mary; 
For the anchor's weighed, 
And the gangplank's swayed, 

And I'm bound for Tipperary. 

— which all goes to show that Tipperary was 
even then destined to lure mankind, though 
a "long way" off. These songs, you see, were 
followed by the clogs, the real origin of the 
song and dance. At least the clog had the 
merit of being danced alone. 

There had to be a row with the older 
brother: moreover, it must needs be a pretty 
A Celtic hot one - That Tommy should 
Family need a licking would be clear 
enough, and that he should avoid 
it was most natural. He says he was "wise" 
to the purpose of his brother, and when he 



26 SCOTTY KID 

stole into the room armed with knotted ropes, 
Tommy was dressed waiting for him. It 
was in the dining room where a lounge had 
been placed for the boy's bed, and that sort 
of a fiery Celt had the best kind of weapons 
of defense all ready to his hand. "Touch me 
with that rope and I will lay your head open 
with this plate." Doubtless he would have 
tried; at any rate, the brother regarded it 
as not unlikely and retired, not without some 
words vitriolic on both sides, The next 
morning in the saloon it was even worse, and 
Tommy is off for himself, each brother hav- 
ing sent the other to hell most cordially. 

However desirable or undesirable work 
may be, it makes a good-stepping stone to 
E meals — with any regularity. So 

Hunger or Anderson works. It is not long 

Medium before an easier way to meals is 
Work 

shown him by an acquaintance, 

and here we enter — not too deeply — into the 

mystery of hypnotism. One hates to be 

always qualifying one's assertions, but in the 

hypnotism we are to deal with is no mystery 

at all. It is most palpably plain sailing. Let 



HIS START IN LIFE 27 

no one suppose that we wish to have it in- 
ferred that all hypnotism is as simple. By 
no means. The writer is quite willing to 
acknowledge the dreadful occult reality of 
the "real thing" and then give it as wide a 
berth as he would a ship infested with bu- 
bonic plague. Tommy merely came into the 
commercial sort, which is perhaps only as 
harmful as other quackery. He himself 
pays tribute to the genuineness of some me- 
diums, but says that the "framed-up" kind 
are the most interesting and hence the more 
profitable to the showman. As far as we 
know, public hypnotism is no longer popular 
or profitable. In California ten or fifteen 
years ago there was money in it, and here is 
where Tommy came in — an important part 
of the show. He describes how he was put 
through the preliminaries — the training that 
was to make him valuable. Docility is the 
first essential. The ability to stand any- 
thing, without sign or move, is the first asset. 
Then the willingness to relax completely at 
the wish of the demonstrator. Now Tommy 
earned his money ; he was a treasure. 



28 SCOTTY KID 

It was at a demonstration before business 
and professional men in Los Angeles. 

"You see this boy ! He is absolutely dead 

to the world. See how limp he is. When I 

Control drop him he makes no attempt to 

for a Con- protect his head, nor does he feel 
sideration any ^^ g^ j wffl pun ^ 

needle through his lips" (he actually does it) 
"and you will not note a quiver." ( Tommy 
sets his face like a flint and kills the quiver, 
thinking of the "V" that awaits only the 
audience's dismissal. ) 

"Now, this kid can be made to believe that 
he can dance. What will you have — a reel 
or a hornpipe? See how awkwardly he 
starts, but you will soon see the real thing." 
(Real enough to be sure; what's in one's 
early training if Tommy can't reel?) "Now, 
boy, a song and dance!" (Whoop! but the 
Kid is right in his element. This beats the 
needle and lip test.) 

It is not all over yet. Here's the supreme 
test and it must come close to the end of the 
program, for obvious reasons. 

"Now, to show how even the involuntary 



HIS START IN LIFE 29 

action of the muscles is in my contral I 
will give this boy a vile drink and 

the Goods *ell ^™ ^ * s *^ e mos t palatable 
wine. I will mix this sweet oil, 
quinine, mustard, pepper, and so forth, and 
see him smack his lips over it." 

Now, Tommy, you certainly have deliv- 
ered the goods. "It's nae sae easy," but it is 
only a short test of nerve after all. A hur- 
ried exit, two fingers thrust down into the 
throat a ways, and the "goods" — . And he 
claims that a glass of beer or two could wash 
away the taste. That's the really queer part 
of it, isn't it? 

"But," some one asks, "what was the motif 
for private lectures in hypnotism to profes- 
Th sional men and merchants?" You 

Economic must remember that we are talk- 
Value of [ n g f things that took place fif- 
Hypno tism - 

teen years ago, otherwise we are 

self-convicted of romancing. No idle curi- 
osity this. Think of the advantage to the 
salesman, for instance, if he could in some 
way gain the ascendancy over the will of the 
man to whom he wants to sell goods. Would 



30 SCOTTY KID 

not a lawyer give a pretty penny if he felt he 
might at will sway the minds of twelve men 
in a jury box? And the detective — the third 
degree dealt to suspected men is nothing to 
what he might expect to get from real hyp- 
notic influence. Experimental psychology 
tells the same story. And the teacher — but 
the mind is fairly dazzled with the possibil- 
ities in almost legitimate ways for the exer- 
cise of the occult science. As to opportu- 
nities for graft and chicanery there is no 
limit. In that audience of people inquiring 
for possible roads to further some end, imag- 
ine, if you please, a minister of the gospel. 
He has the best reasons in the world to get a 
hold on the imagination and will of the 
people to whom he appeals; can he borrow 
anything from this smooth vender of plaus- 
ible short cuts? "Surely, it may not be of 
the devil; and if it were, how smart a trick 
to win on him — beat him at his own game!" 
What think you of it? 

Here comes an almost necessary digres- 
sion. Do you know Los Angeles? Is there 
any city in America more friendly to cults 



HIS START IN LIFE 31 

of all sorts? Is there any phase of human 

belief that has not found some congenial soil 

for its propagation in the City of 
The City 
of Angels Angels? You can't escape "Los" 

in this story. Brother Tommy 
figures in a number of different attitudes of 
mind, and he must needs come back to Los 
Angeles for almost every start. Nor is he 
alone in this experience. We have in mind 
a number of other men who have spread out 
their hands or hearts at one or another of 
the blazes that have promised heat, and quite 
frequently it has been in Los Angeles. 

Apparently, the hypnotic graft was soon 
worked out, or else the desire for variety was 
First Ap- operative (not ignoring the pain- 
pearance ful price paid for the "V" afore- 
as"Vag" mentioned), but Tommy moves 
on. A friend shows him how to work his 
way on cars, and he makes for the north. 
This riding on cars, the successful beating 
of one's way, is a high art and demands 
separate treatment. So far has Tommy pro- 
gressed that he can conceal himself in a 
freighter and ride on lumber cars. This is 



32 SCOTTY KID 

the mere kindergarten of the business; the 
high-school course will come later. Yes, and 
he cannot pass up even in the lower grades 
without being "plucked." On the way up 
to Frisco, after a ride on the rods near the 
bumpers, some rest and refreshment being 
desirable, he goes across the lots to a rail- 
road sand house, and when he awakes is 
confronted by the town constable. This costs 
him three days in the local jail — the first 
of many to come for greater offenses. 
Arrest and imprisonment for vagrancy is 
interesting business and might excite not 
fruitless speculation as to its economic value. 
Tommy doesn't seem to set much impor- 
tance to the event, but it is just possible that 
he underestimates the significance of that 
first inside view of a "cooler." 

Of the next year in the city of San Fran- 
cisco there is not a very detailed account 

preserved. That Tommy was 
Song and , -, ... 

Dance sunk deeper in vicious ways is 

clear enough. Money seems to 
have been easy, mostly earned about restau- 
rants and saloons. A song and dance is paid 



HIS START IN LIFE 33 

in a variety of ways, sometimes by a free 
drink, again by a cigar, and quite frequently 
by a "free-will offering." (We wonder now 
why Tommy used that term — whether per- 
haps it is in the light of later religious expe- 
riences. It smacks of the camp meeting.) 
Anyway, he got sometimes as high as three 
dollars or four dollars in the hat at one time. 
It seemed to take but about one year of 
this to arouse him to further travel. It is to 
c • ' ai Portland, Oregon, now that he 
Celebrities takes himself. Portland at that 
and Their ti me seemed to be infested with 
criminals of a real sort. There 
were "Frisco Pat," "Red Devine," "K. C. 
Jimmie," and "Baldie," "Slim," etc., all pres- 
ent masters in the art of getting something 
for nothing, though, after the peculiar nature 
of things, there was not a man of them who 
did not pay enormous prices for every clever 
job he did. Here's where Tommy got his 
name. He merges into Scotty Kid, a name 
doubtless written in many a tramp's album, 
in sheds, on railroad cars and bridges and 
water-tanks all over the United States. The 



34 SCOTTY KID 

date that goes with the autograph is pretty 
old now and no present-day tramp cares 
when he sees "S. K. 3-10-05" whether the 
arrow points west or east, for the Kid is off 
the road with no pal on his track. 

Here we break into professional robbery. 
Frisco Patsey is easily the leader, and is 
worth considering in reference to some of his 
separate exploits, but just now we follow 
him with Scotty Kid as the gang "does" the 
States of Oregon and Washington, breaking 
into stores, shops, and private houses, and 
finally into jail. Portland seems to have 
been the best place to dispose of goods 
secured by this process: barbers' supplies, 
bolts of cloth, muffs and furs, wraps for 
women — all sorts of things which the Kid 
himself could not begin to remember. 

The method of concealment was very 

simple and very effective. Everything was 

Getting wrapped in an ordinary sleeping 

Away with blanket or bed quilt, all tied up 
the Goods with ropes tQ look like the bundles 

which all farm hands must carry from place 
to place with them. You wouldn't expect 



HIS START IN LIFE 35 

such hand baggage to travel with the own- 
er (?) on a Pullman. It was the approved 
fashion, however, to go de luxe. That the 
conductor did not detect the rider is excus- 
able on the ground of the very general belief 
among trainmen that only one tramp out of 
a thousand would dare to ride in such a 
Riding dangerous place. In the middle 
Fourth- of the night, on the opposite side 
from the station, two men get 
under one Pullman. (Incidentally, this 
shows how the Kid is progressing in the 
tramp grades.) There is a bar about three 
feet long and two inches wide to sit on, so 
that one could put his feet on the air-brake 
rod. This was right between the wheels, 
mind you, and the bundles were crammed up 
between the axles and cross beams of wood 
which form a sort of frame. When the train 
stopped, off come your riders (it would seem 
as though they earned the title "rough 
riders" before the Cuban war), and they 
crouched down behind the car wheels till the 
train moves on again. 
When once in Portland each separate 



86 SCOTTY KID 

plunderer tries a separate pawnshop, and an 
observer of any one of them would most 
likely say, "There goes a ranch hand look- 
ing for work." But seventy dollars to one 
hundred and fifty dollars is the sale price of 
one of those bundles, all eventually finding 
itself in the red-light district, "blown in" for 
the benefit of bums and tramps, who ac- 
knowledge their fraternity in their times of 
affluence. It is not all harmony, however; 
fights and brawls are quite the inevitable 
denouement; afterward arrest with five or 
ten days' sentence to top off with. 

Then starts the merry round again. The 
Kid had two and a half years of this. Its 
Frisco en d was brought about by the not- 

Patsey, quite-enough skillfulness of the 
Specialist king of his business> "Frisco 

Patsey." He could go into houses at night, 
says the Kid, and tell you the next day the 
number of the people in the family, the color 
of their hair, the kind of sleeping robes they 
wore, with some shrewd guesses as to their 
ages thrown in. Of course it was part of his 
business to note the kind of furniture and 



HIS START IN LIFE 37 

other stage settings. He boasted a knowl- 
edge of the use of chloroform, just how much 
to apply to the noses of the sleepers to deepen 
sleep without risk of fatalities. 

Here follows the Kid's description of the 
program of a day not far from being the last 
Arranging °f *^ s phase of his professional 
for a career. The Kid seems to have 

Repast been regarded by the gang as 
peculiarly adapted for the work of scout 
and provider. They are in a new town. 
The gang is largely in hiding in what they 
call "the jungle," doubtless a bit of heavy 
brush in the vicinity of the woody portion of 
the town. They are in hiding for almost 
obvious reasons : in the first place, their work 
is to be in the night, and the less they are seen 
the better; then they must needs sleep in 
preparation for it. Hence the Kid's mis- 
sion. He goes to the butcher and begs a 
piece of meat, and then to the grocery for 
"spuds" — never bought where they can be 
begged, and the strange part of it is that 
they seldom need to be bought. Coffee 
comes from a private house and milk from 



38 SCOTTY KID 

a dairy. It must be understood that each 
article is hid before approaching the next 
place, or the plea of starvation would not 
look well. After a fruit cannery house has 
supplied the desert for the repast, the last 
step is to get a gunny sack which frequently 
can be half filled with the collected articles. 
There is a fire waiting in the jungle with 
fairly proficient cooks all ready with impro- 
vised materials — coal stolen from the rail- 
road, a shovel for a frying pan, and tomato 
cans for cups (they have even been washed 
too). 

It was at Centralia, Washington, where 
took place all the foregoing to a bit of drama 
which Frisco Patsey had staged for the even- 
ing. The Kid was the "forerunner," as he 
himself puts it. A prosperous saloon is 
picked for a "killing," and Scotty spends his 
evening there. He must keep his eyes open 
while he earns his nickels and dimes with his 
songs and dance. He acquaints himself with 
the lay of the room, the number of steps 
from the door to the bar, the position of the 
window. He casually gets informed as to 



HIS START IN LIFE 89 

the hour of closing, while his eye is locating 
the till and he forms some notion of the con- 
tents of the bag therein. The habits of "bar- 
keeps/' their looks and potential prowess — 
all data on these subjects — will not come 
amiss to the captain of finance awaiting him 
in the jungle. It is near twelve when Frisco 
Patsey sallies forth armed with all the in- 
formation the scout can give him, plus his 
forty-four caliber and a hat he has appro- 
priated on the way, slit to form a mask. A 
coat taken from a line was also a handy addi- 
tion to his wardrobe, and he is near the 
saloon at about twelve. Looking through 
the window, he sees the "barkeeps" washing 
up and donning their coats preparatory to 
leaving. Quickly entering, with back to the 
door he accomplishes the usual holdup, with 
this variation, namely, that he makes both 
"barkeeps" turn toward the wall with their 
arms stretched up thereon as far as they can 
go. Patsey 's request for "Hands up" car- 
ries conviction that he will most certainly 
shoot if denied. People know almost in- 
stinctively the voice of the man who means 



40 SCOTTY KID 

business. Now it is a simple thing to back 
toward the door, cautioning the figures on 
the wall to be deliberate in abandoning their 
decorative postures. So he makes his "get- 
away" to the woods, and there is rejoicing 
in the gang. 

Retribution is swift on the heels of ac- 
complishment. The net will close on some 
one for this, and we wonder if F. P. ever felt 
anything but exultation that it was not he 
that must "fall for that job/' 

The Kid is up in the morning to approach 
the town for some necessary purchase, and 
How he meets the marshal almost face 

Scotty to face, who with a constable is 

patrolling the town. They 
"cover" him almost instantly, fearing that 
he may be armed, and his hands go to twelve 
o'clock quite automatically it would seem. 
They march him off for a preliminary hear- 
ing, where he swears to his innocency, but 
is bound over for trial. Circumstantially 
everything is against him, and when it comes 
to the trial the barmen evidently do not pro- 
pose to let escape the only man in sight, so 



HIS START IN LIFE 41 

they swear positive identification, claim to 
recognize his Irish brogue (not remarkable 
in view of his singing in the afternoon) and 
the whole thing ends with a sentence of three 
years for burglary. Meanwhile he has not 
been put into very safe keeping. He was 
committed to the jail where he had been stay- 
ing for the three weeks, awaiting his trial. 
Too energetic to have been idle during this 
time, he makes some history and tells it in 
nearly his own words, as follows : 

"With one of the case knives, given me to 
eat with, and a poker, I endeavored to poke 
"out— ou * a k°^ e * n the side of the wall. 
Will Be It was nearly two feet thick and 
Back made of very strong wood. I 

worked on this every day in a 
place behind the bowl of the toilet which had 
become saturated with water and was easier 
to cut and burn with the red-hot poker. It 
being cold weather, we were allowed a fire 
in this jail room, and I would unscrew the 
toilet bowl and take it off, putting it back 
after I got through, so that the hole was com- 
pletely hid. Twice a day the jailor came to 



42 SCOTTY KID 

feed me, and he never noticed the hole. On 
the day of the sentence the hole was almost 
large enough to let me through, for I had 
tried it. A few more inches had to come 
off to let my shoulders through. So that 
afternoon, after returning to the jail, and 
expecting to be shipped next morning to the 
penitentiary, I worked hard on the hole. It 
was finally finished and I prepared to make 
my getaway as soon as possible, for at any 
moment the sheriff might come to take me 
away, or put steel shackles on me for over 
night, or put me in a steel cage for safe keep- 
ing. Therefore I could not wait until it was 
dark or my chance might be gone, so I pulled 
down the toilet bowl and got down on my 
knees and flat on my belly, and twisted my- 
self out of the hole. The jail was facing the 
county clerk's office, and as I climbed over 
the fence some one saw me from the public 
office and sent in the alarm to the sheriff's 
office that there was a "jail-break." In the 
meantime I was running for four blocks 
down a side street and as I turned to see 
what was doing I discovered men on horse- 



HIS START IN LIFE 43 

back and a big crowd of citizens running 
in my direction. I turned a corner, know- 
ing that I must act quick and conceal my- 
self. There was an empty building just 
about there, and I ran under it, as the 
house stood off the ground, and hid in 
about the center. Just then the men on 
horseback galloped past with the crowd 
of excited citizens and a sheriff's posse com- 
ing behind, red-hot after the jail-breaker. 
As I was thinking that the crowd had about 
passed and I had better slip out and get 
away, I had a streak of dog-gone luck. A 
little terrier happened to run under the 
building where I was, and he started to run 
out when he saw me, barking enough to 
attract the attention of some of the men. 
Very soon the building was surrounded by 
a gang who stood with leveled guns. I saw 
that they meant to shoot under the house so 
I crawled out and gave myself up." It was 
a bit inglorious, after all the heroic effort. 
Not like that of Frisco Patsey on the rail- 
road to the penitentiary, which may get the 
telling. 



U SCOTTY KID 

Now comes the lockup in the cage, with 
handcuffs and feet shackles in addition. The 
ThePrid Scotty Kid is more dangerous 
of Near- than he looks and deserves sharp 
Achieve- attention. Would not any of us, 
perhaps, regard this tribute to our 
prowess as a cheering attestation of progress 
in our chosen profession ? Lest he be swollen 
with pride, the next step is Walla Walla, a 
real, old-time penitentiary. 

An embezzler in this jail tells a thing that 
fails to fit in very well with the rest of the 
A Song story, but as Tommy vouches for 
and its it, we record it. "It was during 
ngm the last night before I was sent up 

that something seemed to come over me, and 
I sang [very beautifully so the embezzler 

said], 

'Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee/ 

At that time I could not understand why I 
sang it — a religious song and me such a 
rascal." He adds later, "But since, I can see 
that the hand of God was on my life trying 
to win me." There will be those who would 



HIS START IN LIFE 45 

not like to contradict this last pious utter- 
ance who may well challenge the biographer ; 
after this wise perhaps: "Yes, but somewhere 
in the past there must be the materials for 
such a song by such a singer. You did not 
tell us of any religious episodes in the early 
days." Never mind, you may be sure they 
were there. That Scotch mother was re- 
sponsible for more than the sending him for 
beer and spirits. She even dreamed a dream 
concerning her wayward youngest, which an 
old Scotch neighbor had ventured to put in 
the form of a prophecy, none other than that 
her boy Tommy would be a preacher. This 
argues some other things concerning her 
habits that only He who saw Nathanael 
under the fig tree could see. Tommy has 
some material concerning his mother's proph- 
ecy which we may not be able to use, which 
is nevertheless interesting. 



CHAPTER II 
"CON. NO. 2173" 

To the writer what is called slang is in- 
tensely interesting. Buffoonery and vul- 
garity may figure largely in the terminology 
of the bum and criminal, but the vividness 
and realism of some of the words give them 
almost a place in language. Hence in telling 
the Kid's story many of the Kid's words 
quite naturally appear with enough glossary 
to make them intelligible. 

"When I came into the Big House [pen- 
itentiary] I was given into the mits of the 
chief screw [jailer] and he took 
Dialect me first* after frisking [examin- 
ing] my rags good in every 
pocket, to the mug studio. Here they 
take me, side and front view, in my citizen's 
rags in which I came to the stir [prison]. 
Then comes the bath room, a pool of water 
eight by twelve, where I shed my rags and he 
gives me a bar of bum soap with a strong 

46 



"CON, NO. 2173" 47 

odor. I scrub, dry, and dog myself [dress 
myself] with a suit of striped 'con.' 
clothes numbered 2173. Then come a pair 
of kicks [shoes], clumsy, lowcut, and stiff, 
that are about like wooden ones. Next 
comes the barber shop, where they shear my 
wool with clippers and scrape my mug with 
a shive [razor]. Then I must have another 
photo togged in 'con.' clothes. I sure looked 
like a zebra. 

"My next move is to the screw's office, 
where I strip naked while he marks down all 
Matricula- scars, birthmarks, and tattoos, 
tionand takes account of missing or de- 
Bequire- formed wings, hide, etc. (all my 
ments fingers and toes are there) . Then 

come measurements of height, waist, etc., 
color of your blinks [eyes], length even of 
your snoot [nose], questions as to people 
and whereabouts. Then come the 'con.' rags 
again, and he puts you into a drum [cell] 
in a corridor of many other steel drums, all 
separated by a steel wall. Here I am locked 
in. In the drum are a heavy iron bucket and 
two tin cups holding about a quart of water 



48 SCOTTY KID 

each. There are two swinging hammocks 
for the two cons, who are to flop [sleep] 
here. One hammock is hung above the other 
in this room, eight by six. The first guy I 
drummed with was a horsethief doing a two- 
spot [two years' sentence] for swiping a nag. 
This big stiff used to make me sick. He was 
always yelping about the time he had to 
spend in the stir, or stories about old sick 
cows or sheep he had stolen. Such wind- 
jamming did not interest me at all, and his 
whining about the one year he had still to do 
in the pen, while I had three to do, gave me 
the blues. I did not even care to know the 
days of the week or month; I wanted to for- 
get it, time goes so slow in the stir. 

"My next day is spent in the Jute Mill, 
where they make string and gunny sacks 
from jute. [Here follows some description 
of the working of a jute mill.] Up above 
our heads on one side of the wall was a caged 
balcony, where three screws walked up and 
down with gats [guns] on their shoulders, 
and when any of us cons, wanted to get a 
drink, out on the same floor we would have 



"CON. NO. 2173" 49 

to wave our mit at the gat screw, who would 
"Pen" shake his noddle at us 'Yes. 5 

Peace Ne- Sometimes cons got in a scrap and 
gotiations wou i(j be digging into each other 

bad. The screw then blazed in the air, and if 
there was no split [separation], then he 
would shoot for fair, peppering them in the 
wings or legs to split them. This breaks the 
mix-up and they are glued [caught] and 
taken to the hospital, where their wings are 
treated. Then they stay in their drums until 
they get well, feeding on hospital grub, 
which is better than ordinary chuck. Then 
comes the 'hole' with bread and water for six 
days. They never see light there, and sleep 
on a cold steel floor with no bedding. So 
many a man gets rheumatism." 

He tells how he himself "mixed it" with a 
"foxey bum called Red Wing Mikey." It 

"Battins " a PP ears ^hat ^he casus belli was 
"Kicks," nothing more than a guying which 
^ in the Kid refused to "stand for." 

He says that the war critics of the 
time accredited him (Scotty K.) with hav- 
ing given him of the Red Wing "his battins," 



50 SCOTTY KID 

which it is safe to infer was something in the 
way of a licking. The whole action appears 
to have taken place before the screw "got 
wise," but it was reported to the chief screw. 
"That night the door of my drum was un- 
sloughed." (There's a word for you — "un- 
sloughed." It sounds like a real good old 
English, though a trifle unwieldy for the 
bum dialect). "Come out, Number 2173, 
without your kicks." This meant "the hole" 
for two days and two nights, with water and 
"punk" once a day. He claims that his lower 
wings were rheumatic afterward. (This 
"wings" figure destroys for us a very good 
line of poetry to the effect that "Wings are 
for angels and feet for men.") 

This wasn't the Kid's only experience in 
the hole. He received a day and a night for 

being suspected of stealing oil out 
Hole °^ ^e mill for his "glim." You 

see, all the inmates have lamps in 
their cells, but if they have no cash in the 
office, where their accounts are kept, they 
get no oil. He claims that many a night he 
and others have sat in their dark cell because 



"CON. NO. 2173" 51 

they had no money for oil. Whatever else it 
may be called, it is not coddling. As a 
matter of opinion, if Sherman had occupied 
one of those drums, and without Standard 
Oil connections, we believe he would have 
classed this sort of life just about as he did 
war. It is barely possible that in the minds 
of many, such is the function a jail ought to 
subserve. We will not argue the matter. 

As to oil; if there is oil, then reading is to 
be enjoyed. A sort of censored reading 

matter is allowed (you will re- 
Censors member that all this is more than 

fifteen years ago), and old maga- 
zines get into the cells, and even old news- 
papers with all criminal matter cut out. As 
to letters, they must first be read by the 
jailer, and if there is objectionable or even 
suspicious matter in the letters, they never 
reach the addressee. The same might be 
said concerning outgoing letters. Brother 
Tommy thinks that all this was not so much 
to keep unsullied the streams of influence 
upon the minds of the State's wards as it was 
to cover up all disciplinary methods and to 



52 SCOTT Y KID 

guard the administration's free hand in deal- 
ing with the men. 

Having got this eighteen-year-old Scotty 
K. in the "stir," we find it enough fascina- 
tion to stay with him awhile. Hearing his 
view of the life after being out for a number 
of years, it is evident enough that he regards 
the whole system as the pitting of wits of the 
con. against those of the screw. There did 
not seem to have been at that day anything 
of the sort of thing that Osborne, of Sing 
Sing, appears to have successfully put into 
operation, wherein a prisoner is regarded as 
human and by no means hopeless, but, rather, 
able to take an intelligent part in his own 
regulations. 

Doubtless any "system" past or present of 
caging a criminal would err in about the 
System same way, but now and then a 
and a man gets into the equation, and 

whereas he may not exactly create 
a new system, there is thenceforth a totally 
new element injected into the problem; there 
is now a man dealing with men. A man 



"CON. NO. 2173" 53 

will always find manhood in other men any- 
where. That's a big enough proposition to 
deserve the restating. 

In the Kid's day, the "stir" was a nest of 
vice, and partly, no doubt, because it was all 
N . in the game of beating the screws, 
though, of course, not altogether. 
For instance, there is the opium game. It is 
not easy to get it, in the first place, and 
there's no end of fascination in that. But 
there is a lure in the dope itself. There's 
surcease from unpleasant memories, a per- 
petual sea (provided one can get a continu- 
ous supply) to drown some very real sor- 
rows and forget some most dreary stretches 
of days. Besides, it helps to kill hunger, and 
of the two methods, killing or assuaging 
hunger, the killing method is more practi- 
cable. Food is not plentiful except to trus- 
ties, Tommy says. Read De Quincey and 
see how sleep and most delicious dreams 
would loom up big to a caged-in human. 



CHAPTER III 

HOW THEY GET DOPE 

Here is a game of almost infinite variety. 
It amounts to this : the avenues of approach 
are determined by the number of allies. 
Some cons., convicted of petty larceny, have 
the stuff sewed into their clothes, where it 
will not be found by ordinary searching. 
Here's another way illustrated: Fat Kelley 
was an engineer, doing ten years for robbing 
a safe. He was what they call a "peat man" 
(a peat being a safe) , and during the last two 
years of his time, while acting as head engi- 
neer, he was made a trusty. That meant that 
he might go to the railroad station where he 
had business in connection with machinery 
and implements needed inside the walls. Of 
course there were other trusties besides Fat 
Kelley, and it will have to be admitted that 
under almost any "system" all trusties are 
not to be trusted. There was the trusty that 
took care of the bloodhounds, ready at any 

54 



HOW THEY GET DOPE 55 

T v. time to slip their leashes when an 

and Their escaped con. needed trailing. An- 
d °p® other looked out for the lawns out- 

side of the walls ; another was the 
warden's cook, and so on. Some one of 
them is outside of the walls without a guard 
at all hours of the day and night. Here are 
a fine lot of avenues for incoming dope. In 
the hours that all hands get together on Sun- 
day, a prisoner soon to be released arranges 
on behalf of some friend inside to be at a 
certain place with the "stuff," there to meet 
a trusty who will bring it in. Any old ren- 
dezvous will do; some old can, under some 
tree or bush "two bottles of white stuff" 
(morphine) and "one pound of black 
stuff" (smoked opium or "yen shee" — the 
vilest cheap stuff procurable). Our friend 
Kelley has to be guarded in his handling this 
stuff of course. He must do it in spoonful 
packages, and on that Sunday when they are 
all together, in the lavatory or other more or 
less guarded place, he can hand it out. 

Here is another clever way. It requires 
two newspapers of the same date. The 



56 SCOTTY KID 

ANew friend outside cuts out a column 

Use for of one paper, say an item concern- 
Advertising ing « Help Wanted# » He sprin- 
kles very fine white "stuff" on this por- 
tion of the uncut paper corresponding and 
pastes the cutting over it. This takes neat- 
ness and a hot iron, which when skillfully 
used leaves no trace, save a slightly thicker 
paper, not discernible by ordinary handling. 
Of course, if the screw were wise enough to 
hold the paper up to the light, the ruse would 
be patent enough. The opium that has 
"gotten by" that way is an indirect evidence 
to the fact that there are other things for 
jailers to do besides looking into convicts* 
mail. We asked how much could come in 
that method, and were told that there was 
enough for more than ten good doses, de- 
pending, of course, on the size of the "ad" 
doctored. 

A "wipe" is a handkerchief of course. 
Philologically the word is a saving of sylla- 
The bles. ^ half dozen "wipes" sat- 

"Wipe" urated in dissolved morphine, or 
Method - coke /' an d then dried and ironed 



HOW THEY GET DOPE 57 

can be mailed to the pal inside. He can 
easily get what he wants from them. 

It must have been a good deal harder for 
this kind of dope fiend to manage. He must 
The Light shoot it into himself. Of course, 
Artillery when free and on the outside, he 
has his hypodermic needle. Oc- 
casionally a "hypo man" can manage to keep 
a "gun," or get it through a trusty, but if 
not, a big pin or "shive" (knife) will do. 
He must punch some sort of hole, and then 
with a medicine dropper he must shoot in the 
dope, and in a short time he will get its 
effects. 

Chapters might be written as to the effect 
of the dope on different people. The Kid 
took it for a matter of nine years, so he says. 
He was always working for what he calls 
"sensations." In the first place, a "fiend" 
has poor digestion, or, putting it colloquially, 
his stomach is on the bum; he always feels 
"geed" (sickly) unless he is loaded with 
"white stuff," or "coke." Right appropriate 
is the word "coke," seeing it is the scrapings 
of the pipes of the Chinese smokers. To use 



58 SCOTTY KID 

this last is to "coal up." The appetite (?) 
of the fiend is abnormal enough. Note the 
following bill of fare which the Kid vouches 

Th D ^ or as a ^ s * °^ *^ e on ^ t em pti n g 

Fiend's viands presented by the sick im- 
Dinner agination of a fiend. Cream puffs 
— not so bad! Tea and greasy- 
pork chops and candy. (Now the potpourri 
begins to distress us a little.) Sometimes 
soft-boiled eggs were welcome. Then, again, 
custard pie and tea served finely. The rule 
is, says the Kid, never to drink cold water 
when full of dope, for it kills the sensation, 
and even sometimes "makes a guy feel as 
though he would croak." 

"It gees a man in his tank to scoff [eat] 
heavy chuck." Taken as a text, the fore- 
going may be regarded as a lesson in temper- 
ance in the matter of foods, but it is partic- 
ularly addressed to the "guy" who "coals up" 
on "black stuff." But why "scoffing" should 
be the term for eating is not made clear by 
your bum philologist. 

But, having eaten our heavy meal, we are 
to observe whether there is any post-pran- 



HOW THEY GET DOPE 59 

Sensation dial touch which Lady Nicotine 
!?• . . can administer. The dope man 
Hence— should not despise any of the 
the "But" lesser aid of sister drugs. "So," 
says Scotty, "give me plenty of good old 
buts of cigs with lots of nic in them to 
smoke." The word "nic" is easy. It is the 
present-day familiarity with a lady which 
makes it admissible to call her by her first 
name after an hour's acquaintance. The 
Kid's acquaintance with Lady Nicotine is 
much greater, and he, if any one, should have 
the privilege of calling her "Nic." Now, as 
this picking up of "buts" is not strictly san- 
itary, we can assume that the real fiend over- 
looks hygiene somewhat to get his "sensa- 
tion." Anyway, a cigar or cigarette "but" is 
much stronger when smoked down to the 
end, and Scotty says that it stirs up the 
"white stuff" in a fiend and gives him a very 
pleasant feeling. Just what that gathering 
in the tank of the fiend portends from a phys- 
iological standpoint — when "Nic" holds col- 
loquy with the "coal" — we cannot say. Ex- 
perimental psychologists are working on 



60 SCOTTY KID 

abundance of this material and are at 
liberty to take Scotty on the stand any 
time* 

It is not amiss to say that if one were 
looking for an excuse for Scotty's nine-years' 
dope experience, his "geed" neck would do 
better than most people's excuses. To put it 
in his own speech: "The croakers said I had 
a form of con [purely lazy contraction of 
consumption] broke out in my neck." This 
story comes later. In fact, to the jail may 
probably be laid the blame for it all. Tuber- 
culosis is no joke, but particularly that which 
attaches to the gland of the neck. You may 
count on our not ignoring it in our treatment 
of S. K. 

Would to God there were no worse things 
in jail than dope ! Of this we may not speak. 



CHAPTER IV 

PRISON FARE AND DISCIPLINE 

The Kid now invites us to a meal with 
him. We are more than doubtful whether 
"Putting hi s privileges cover the entertain- 
UsUpat ment of many guests or whether 
the Club" we mus t k e out-of-town people, 

or whether we register, etc. Surely, it is "up 
to us" whether we ever go with him again, 
after we have enjoyed the club's privileges 
once. We prophesy just one meal; we could 
name the very day. 

First we note that our hosts have emerged 
from their cells at the sound of the whistle. 
Originally aroused at five thirty, they have 
swept and garnished their cells, and are now 
carrying cell buckets to the place of running 
water, to be left there. And now for the 
meal that on the outside suggests the break- 
ing of a long fast, but to many of the cons it 
is only a slight fracture of the fast — not a 

61 



62 SCOTTY KID 

break surely. No sauntering, if it please 
you. There's a correct procedure, a more- 
than-form involved in our approach. Put 
your right hand on the shoulder of the man 
in front of you and your left on your belt. 
Nay, this is no joyous college "walkaround." 
This is the famous lock step. Most for- 
tunate are you if you ever really forget it and 
walk like other men. For not only to meals, 
but to work and in all your "social" (?) 
goings and comings must you sway in 
rhythm with this chain of striped forked 
animals. But come on in whether you have 
any appetite or not; the real con. (it is 
claimed) never has anything else but ap- 
petite, unless he is doped. You are formed 
in companies of about thirty-five men to a 

table, filing in and standing until 
Manners a ^ are * n place. A bell rings and 

all are seated, and the door is shut 
and locked. The guards are standing on the 
outside of the door — all but one. Up in a 
steel cage about nine by nine at the side of 
the wall sits a lone — what shall we call him? 
Not "reoc bibendi" nor toastmaster, but as- 



PRISON FARE 63 

suredly he is master of the feast (or fast). 
His loaded rifle is pointed somewhat signifi- 
cantly downward, and it almost seems as 
though there might be some justification for 
it, since under the beneficent "system" occa- 
sionally some one acts "mean," and the 
loaded gun pointed at him has a quieting 
effect. Not that it alone is sufficient ; the re- 
calcitrant one needs the meditation that the 
"hole" affords, maybe one day or more, in 
accordance with aggravated symptoms. Lest 
we might be tempted to connect misconduct 
with menu, here is what you are to eat this 
morning. One cup of tea — a trifle bitter we 
fear, but the best we can do for you this 
morning— and plenty of dry bread. Please 
get that combination and then speculate, if 
you please, on how anyone can go hungry. 
One plate of oatmeal with a teaspoonful of 
brown sugar, with milk "mixed with much 

water." O Lord, make us duly 
A GracG 
at Meals thankful for the food we have just 

received, which most of us, espe- 
cially we visitors, do by no means deserve. 
This, we feel sure, is quite a new company 



64 SCOTTY KID 

we are taking to dinner, and now "lock- 
stepped" in, and under the benign supervi- 
sion of our "gat" friend in the proscenium 
box on the side wall, we will discuss the fol- 
lowing: First course, stewed meat with thick 
gravy interspersed with occasional parsnips, 
potatoes, and carrots, with our inevitable tea 
(still bitter) , and "bread of affliction," as the 
prophet Jeremiah hath it. 

It is evening; the hard day's work is now 
ended, and we should be ready to sup with 
appetites sharpened by jute-mill 
Prunes! experience. A plate of rice 
brightens the bill of fare, together 
with "six prunes," not altogether bereft of 
their natural juice. Let no man wonder at 
this feat of memory that fixes the number of 
those prunes as irrevocably six. Officialdom 
need not err in a little matter of prunes. 
Having settled that six is a better number, 
say, than five, why vary? Let the steward 
see to it then that each prisoner confidently 
expects his six prunes. "Such thjngs are 
great to little men." We know not whether 
to laugh or cry when we think of how little 



PRISON FARE 65 

is the span of many an imprisoned life, within 
or without stone walls, whose daily monotony 
is daily ticked off in terms of prunes. Am I 
a "six-prune" man? If so, may I still be 
thankful for the bitter tea and dry bread. 

Why not look forward to Sunday? It is 
a day of rest, in the first place — and, by the 
•'The wa y> h°w in the world did this 

Better the happen? Secondly, we eat, not 
Better * more often than on other days — 
the"— one meal less in fact — but the 
Scoffing qua lity suggests "Day of all the 
week the best." On Scotty Kid's bill of fare 
we notice "a piece of tough steak" and wish 
the Kid had not put in the word "tough." 
For what do you expect in a restaurant of 
the sort? There are necessarily few tender- 
loins in steaks, and the board charged here is 
not exorbitant. Moreover, there is the cup 
full of red beans, suggesting that in the early 
days of the "system" there might have been 
a warden whose New England memories 
helped him to enforce the necessary relation 
between beans and Sunday breakfast. 
Great is New England! Nor will we our- 



66 SCOTTY KID 

selves fail her in our own weekly tribute of 
beans. But what is this "colored substance 
which they called coffee" ? And you say that 
it was so bitter that the convicts called for 
cold water, "which was their privilege." 
Any man (who has tried to make coffee) 
ought to know what bad coffee is. Anyway, 
you exercised your privilege, "Let your vic- 
tuals stop your mouth!" We are glad, 
though, to record this humane privilege. 

The only real criticism that counts heavily 
is that, with the exception of the trusties, 

"G mf rt no one ^ e * s enou £>h to eat. The 
Comfort. "bum" stew and the six prunes 
Scorned of an( j ife r j ce come very short of 
Devils" . 

filling up a man, but perhaps 

Scotty, you and the rest of you hungry mal- 
contents, are only paying part of the price 
with your empty stomachs. It may be that 
the luxury of a full meal is one of your de- 
privations, an experience distinctly "coming 
to you" and corrective in character. As for 
us, we do not know the peculiarity of that 
particular system, and do not feel like sit- 
ting in judgment. Much depends upon the 



PRISON FARE 67 

reasons for which society puts men in such 
places and what society expects of them 
when they come out. We confess to have 
had no experience in keeping a prison, al- 
though we have brought up some children (a 
confessedly different thing with occasional 
parallels), and we are not so cock-sure 
about certain punitive measures as we used 
to be. Leastwise hunger is not to be pooh- 
poohed, and our smile is a bit awry when we 
recall the queer conceit of prisoners that each 
man has a "tape." Is not this expression, 
said to be common among the cons., rather 
pitiful? — "My tape [worm] got fed, but I 
got none. It takes all I get to satisfy the 
tape, and there is none left for me." Alack, 
to have an enemy within the walls ! And to 
have it thrive in perfect safety! Scotty 
leaves his testimony as follows : "For a year 
I went to bed hungry and woke up hungry — 
wanted more but could not get it." If this 
is a part of the punishment of prison, it is 
no inconsiderable element in discipline. 

The ambition of the college youth is ex- 
pressed most frequently in such terms as, 



68 SCOTTY KID 

"Making" "I am S°^ n S *° tr Y to make the 
the crew, or the football team, or 

Hospital j un i or society." The con. has his 
ambition. He too has his heart set on mak- 
ing a place above his fellows, and, like the 
collegian, he must pay his price for it. It will 
not be a matter of athletic training to become 
physically fit. Quite the contrary, he must 
qualify as an unfit. His objective point is 
not so much otium cum dignitate — a free- 
dom from hard work and difficulty of the 
jute mill — but it is simply hospital "scof- 
fings" (do you regard it as remarkable that 
the bum dialect is so rich in words for eat- 
ing?). You have to get by the "croaker" to 
get into the hospital. It is to be presumed 
that he is no fool (the doctor), and that he 
will guard the commissary department as 
well as he can. In fact, he can be relied on 
to lean a bit in the other direction — toward 
conservatism — when it comes to the deter- 
mining as to whether a con. is sick enough for 
the hospital. The eating of a bit of soap 
may make a man unhappy enough "under 
his apron" to desire the conveniences of a 




GROUP OF SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE AT PEPEEKEO 

(see page 211) 




PAHOA MISSION 



(see page 201) 



PRISON FARE 69 

hospital, but the "croaker" may regard the 
case as one serious enough only for an emetic, 
and he may order the con, to go down to the 
mill, and he will send down some medicine 
later. That must be a disappointment, the 
keener that the price paid in real physical 
discomfort is high, to be followed by a dreary 
stretch of the old malady, hunger. But there 
is another road to the hospital. Here come 
the long line of men swinging along in lock 
step. They are bound for the mill. Out 
steps one man from the line — the privilege of 
the sick — and the doctor looks him over. He 
is a sick man even in the eyes of the most 
adverse critic. He must go to his drum, and 
soon he will be in the hospital. Not at first 
will he appreciate any of the advantages of 
his change ; he is paying his price, but in the 
glorious convalescent period he has his re- 
ward in eggs, meat, and even pie and coif ee 
— such "good scoffings." 
Kerosene, And the secret of it all lay in 

Hi^Pri sirapk coa l oil. How it was that 
of Food *h e ^ rs t man °f them came to try 
Stuffs it, guessed that to inject some 



70 SCOTTY KID 

kerosene into his arm would bring about a 
poison to his system, we do not know. 
"Risk?" Of course, that is a part of the 
game. Incidentally, see how the "tape" is 
triumphed over. The hospital scoffings actu- 
ally provide for both. Stated colloquially, 
"His tape gets a good square, also himself." 
All the roads lead to this food question, 
for here in our notes we observe that the Kid 

enviously refers to trusties as be- 
Clover m S the only well-fed, together 

with the expert men in various 
departments — carpenters, engineers, chief 
laundrymen. Shoemakers, and the like. 
Extras are added to their rations, and they 
have no inducement to try and "make the 
hospital." The Kid too looks back on his 
period of plenty. For a year and a half his 
job was in the dining room as waiter. It 
was a delectable company of choice spirits 
who were his contemporaries. Talk of your 
aristocracy by virtue of achievement ! There 
was the cook, in there for murder. The com- 
missary man was likewise a murderer, while 
the head dishwasher was doing time for rape. 



PRISON FARE 71 

And was not the Kid himself a robber? The 
chief bookkeeper was in for arson, but re- 
member this: this group of experts (may we 
not say Rotarians?) were all getting enough 
to eat. 

And the talk of the pen, what of that? Of 
the sort such men must needs talk of. God 

pity the Kid, if there be any gen- 
" Getaway" . 

Glory u ^ ne Kid; in that number he will 

surely never emerge a Kid, nor 
did the Scotty Kid fail of his liberal educa- 
tion in crime, though he was no infant when 
he went in. First of all subjects of interest 
to the penned-in human animal is his freedom 
and how to regain it. All this sort of talk 
will be in terms of "getaway." Every man 
will have his own theory. One will tell you 
that the electric wires that go over the wall 
with a rope thrown over them would stand 
the weight of a man. Another claims that 
the little donkey cart that daily carries the 
refuse from the prison outside the walls 
would make a right glorious chariot to free- 
dom. A man could cover himself with a 
variegated garment of garbage and ride out 



72 SCOTTY KID 

safe enough until he reached the pile and 
then a dash — malodorous perhaps; but, 
surely, the prison hounds would have a run 
for their money. But there are stories 
enough of actual accomplishment. The old 
walls are alive with traditions of successful 
getaways, many of them embellished by the 
retelling till scarcely recognizable. Not one 
of the men inside but dreams some time of 
an exploit like that. Not every one of them 
would have the nerve, say, of one "Whitey 
Collins," for failure may well spell death; at 
any rate, has not every one heard what is 
meted out to the man who is brought back? 
As for Whitey, he was no common man. 
The beau ideal of a venturesome, keen, pol- 
ished and successful con. — willing to "get 
it all in a trick or croak [die] in the act if 
he had to." 

Of the time he "copped a jug" in Seattle 
we need say little (save that it was robbing a 
Whitey bank), or that he made his lam 
Collins, with ten thousand dobbies, tipped 
"Pen" the s hack and rode on the blind to 

Frisco, only that you may want to 



PRISON FARE 73 

know that the "shack" is a brakeman and 
that the "blind" is the door of the mail 
car that is never supposed to be opened, and 
between there and the engine is safe harbor- 
age which sometimes may be purchased for a 
dollar or two. How he gets his sister to hide 
the cash, and in his joyous confidence goes 
from dump to dump sloppin' up — all this is 
commonplace enough. It must sound good 
to anyone that a bum has such a good name 
for a saloon as a "dump"; why, bless you, 
we couldn't, with all our fond regard for 
the place, do better than that ourselves; and 
as to "sloppin"— glorious ! This "sloppin" 
business loosens his tongue while it fastens 
him in other respects, for soon two "flies" 
"glue" him and, ignoring protestations of 
innocence, put bracelets and jewelry on his 
mits and wings — "How like the fond em- 
bellishment of a lovely demoiselle," says one. 
There are distinct differences, but here is 
where Whitey shows to advantage neverthe- 
less. The "flies" know they have 
Personally , M ,. 

Conducted here a man as smar t as they 

make them," hence the jewelry, 



74 SCOTT Y KID 

and the sheriff sits close on that ride up 
through Oregon on the "rambler." It was a 
warm night; the two "flies" may go over into 
another car for a drink, but the sheriff sits 
close and the air comes in not too coolly 
through the open window while the train is 
rambling along through the "jungles" of 
Oregon. Whitey has his lamps on the sheriff 
and sizes him up as a big stiff of a hoosier, 
and evidently makes no mistakes, where an 
error may mean everything. He rises and 
looks out of the window while his blinks are 
glittering a path into the darkness. There is 
a crash, a rattle of chains ; somehow the win- 
dow has shut with a slam, but Whitey has 
leaped out into the night and on rushes the 
rambler. The whole car is in uproar; the 
two "bulls" notify the shack, who stops the 
train far past the place of tremendous impact 
where fell to earth this manacled, desperate 
convict. Back perhaps a quarter of a mile 
go the small band of drummers, farmers, and 
hangers-on, headed by the sheriff and detec- 
tives with flickering lanterns, and it is an 
hour and a half of time and a mile away from 



PRISON FARE 75 

the track that they finally find Whitey with 
hand-shackles off and one leg free, A few 
minutes more would have done the whole 
thing. Expecting to find him maimed and 
broken, they are amazed to see nothing seri- 
ously the matter with him, and once more, 
but even more securely manacled, they bear 
him back to trial and conviction 

But they have not broken his spirit. 
Never does such a man give up hope. It is 
"All Con- in the pen now, where Scotty Kid 

siderable g rs |. k nows an( j admires him, that 
Men — , ' 

Forbear to Collins makes one more dash for 

Babble" freedom. It is singular, when 
one thinks of it, that although these men talk 
freely of their past to one another, encour- 
aging and abetting each other in all sorts of 
crime, yet when it comes to a "getaway," 
your sly con. keeps his own counsel. And 
well he may, seeing that the risk is tremen- 
dous, and he has all too much reason to doubt 
the conscientious scruples of the trapped 
fox who is his mate. 

Now we will let Whitey figure again. 
The gang is on its way home from the jute 



76 SCOTTY KID 

mill. Their march takes the men through 
a narrow lane with a fifteen-foot smooth 
board fence on either side. At the lower end 
of this, on a bridge over the top, sit two gat 
screws with loaded guns, while on the hill end 
is a tower manned with watchful guards. 
To make a getaway there seems the height 
of folly. It is sure death or failure— which 
perhaps is quite as bad. 

One night the herd is winding slowly up 
the hill. A pair of keen eyes have noted an 
„ irregularity in this even surface 
Between of board fence. Those same keen 
Death and e y es have marked the relation of 
certain knot holes to each other, 
also about how big they are. In the jute 
mill, some time, it has been contrived to 
whittle short pegs ; how long they had to be 
secreted one does not know. That afternoon 
was the time to use them and only this keen- 
eyed criminal could have told why. Out 
from the gang a man quickly detaches him- 
self and the line closes up and goes on un- 
concernedly, with perhaps never a backward 
glance. The man quickly puts peg after 



PRISON FARE 77 

Over the P e & * n pl ace > r * ses swiftly and 
Fence noiselessly with no false move, 

Is Out an( j - s oyer ^ e f ence before any 

unusual motion has been detected bv the men 
on the wall. Now the gang has come up to 
the prison in apparent unconcern, though 
under every striped shirt is a consuming curi- 
osity to know how fares it with him who was 
recently one of them, and now — . The reg- 
ular counting takes place, in routine dullness 
at first, but with keen apprehension when it 
is discovered that one is short, but who? A 
roll call shows number 2274 absent. "Who is 
the guy?" It is Whitey Collins's cell which 
is vacant, and shortly the big steam whistle 
screeches out its summons to search parties 
and a warning to the outside world which 
can be heard for miles around that a con- 
vict has escaped. 

And Whitey? He is scuttling toward the 
railroad; in a near roundhouse he soon man- 

_ m ages to steal a set of lumpers 

The Nerve , & „ x , . ... J , , ^ 

that Wins (overalls) and is citizen-clad save 

that he has no "lid." None but a 

seasoned crook would have thought of going 



78 SCOTTY KID 

right into town for it. He looks like a "jerry 
boss" (section overseer) or a farmer, but who 
would have thought of going right to the 
"can" and asking a "bull" for a "lid"? It is 
a plan of daring that succeeds. He gets a 
hat and then mopes away into a barrel house, 
which, of course, proves his undoing, as it 
did before. (By the way, "barrel house" is 
a bit less odious than "dump," but the func- 
tion of the places is the same.) A fool is 
found willing to treat — there always are 
some — but this one pays more speedily for 
his folly than do most. He is taken into a 
back room in confidence, struck between the 
eyes with a piece of wood, and soon Whitey 
is reclothed in better stuff than overalls, 
while the frjend who would treat awakes 
later to an unpleasant dream. But Whitey 
is now out on the main stem (street) like any 
citizen of the burg. There is a reward out 
The Folly ' or him dead or alive, and all the 
that "bulls" of the town are on the qui 

Frustrates ^ But what careg Whitey? 

A bigger fool he than his late victim. He 
has so many "slops" that his secret is oozing 



PRISON FARE 79 

out all over him, and what does he care? He 
has played a frightful game with death and 
nearly won, only to fall like a common drunk 
when a cop jumps out from behind a stair- 
way. He simply is too "sloppy" to meet the 
situation and he is soon led back like a beaten 
cur to the "Big House." 

And now is the trial of nerve. You have 
played and lost, Whitey Collins; can you 
grin and cash up ? They strip him 
Collinsf* anc * wash him and throw him in 
the hole for that night, none too 
gently you might imagine. It will be strange 
if our sympathies are not largely with the 
screws on this occasion, but they may shift 
again. First the warden must give him a 
"balling out," whatever that is. (Perhaps 
we will have to put ourselves in the warden's 
place to know just what to say to Whitey 
during this conversation.) He surely is a 
nuisance, but we fear it will make very little 
difference what we say. Handcuffed, tied 
up against the wall of an empty cell, face 
backward, he gets the next dose of his reme- 
dial medicine, as with body bared he shivers 



80 SCOTTY KID 

in apprehension. Probably he can sense the 
meaning of the shuffling feet and can hear 
the very rustling of the huge water hose 
against the floor. He knows instinctively 
that the croaker is standing there (how queer 
that a croaker should be a doctor, and that to 
croak should mean to die! Is this, then, a 
wholesale judgment on an honorable pro- 
fession?) This croaker has his watch in 
hand, and two cons, are placing the nozzle in 
the hands of the head jailer. Then, in 
strength to "redden his hide," out comes a 
stream of cold water on his back. For fifteen 
or twenty minutes this remorseless weight 
of cruel water seeks along his spine for the 
weak spot that is sure to be there, and when 
it finds it, there comes the unsuppressible 
yell, and soon, exhausted, Whitey lands limp 
and senseless against the wall. Now comes 
the function of the croaker. He feels the 
pulse of the prostrate man, watches the re- 
turn of consciousness, figures in his mind how 
soon he may stand another dose, and soon — 
we will not say how soon — up against the 
wall, his teeth set and lips pressed till they 



PRISON FARE 81 

are white, does Collins make his expiation. 
Will he "bring forth fruits for repentance"? 
Not he. If we could see inside that seething 
brain, we should certainly discover, Spartan 
though he appears, a grim, implacable hatred 
of the powers he is fighting. He must spend 
time in the "hole," there to contract rheu- 
matism and to brood in fierce re- 
P^j volt. Some day he will have an- 

other chance, and finally on a 
scaffold in a neighboring State he will render 
up his misspent life at the demand of society, 
which doubtless could have made a useful 
citizen of him but failed. 

Apropos of punishments, look at one, 
Goat-Island Tommy by name. He too is no 
Th Sunday school superintendent. 

Expiation He is implicated in a jail break, 
of Goat- where broken iron bars in the jute 
mill are in evidence. He must be 
summarily dealt with. See him there. He is 
hanging from something closely resembling 
a cross. Nay, there are no nails, simply 
fastenings, wherebj^ his feet are a few inches 
from the ground and his hands tied to his 



82 SCOTTY KID 

side, while his weight is suspended by fasten- 
ings to shoulders and waist. Hung out in 
the open, he is exposed to the sun, and flies 
swarm unmolested over his face for six hours. 
The first hour may not have been so much 
to stand, but O, the next five! 



CHAPTER V 

GOOD THINGS IN THE PEN 

Certainly there were ! One could hardly 
expect all cons, to say so. No great num- 
ber of them make the right-angle turn of 
Brother Tommy, and naturally the old 
enmity against prison regulations over- 
shadows all else. But, man alive ! how about 
Christmas? Society must have forgotten its 
bitter grudge against you on that day at 
least. The plentiful good food ought to 
stand out in your barren dietary, if nothing 
else. How about the plentiful supply of 
good beef and potatoes? What a time the 
"tape" must have had with the puddings and 
pie! Then, aside from the "scoffings" re- 
member the sports, the races, the very re- 
spectable vaudeville, which talented inmates 
were well qualified to give. Even the "mass" 
of CHRIS T-mass somehow re- 

ChristMAS „ . 

in the Pen fl ec * s something better than our 

poor humanity could have in- 

83 



84 SCOTTY KID 

vented. To be sure, to many the Christ-child 

has never grown up into the suffering, and 

finally risen and triumphant CHRIST. 

Such never know him in any other capacity 

than that of the Babe in the manger. A 

tragic loss this, to the individual and the 

world, but better, far better for that world, 

to have known him only in the manger than 

not at all. Thus a little light from the Star 

pierces the prison walls and the still more 

impenetrable breast of the cons. 

Among the other good things must be 

mentioned the shortening of sentences on 

account of good behavior. Think 
For Good n i /*» 

Behavior °* getting six months off on a 

three years' sentence! Still finer 
is it to have eight whole years off a twenty 
years' sentence — a little lifetime to the pris- 
oner of the pen. (Is it beginning to dawn 
on you that this word "pen" is perhaps the 
word derived from the term used in corral- 
ling animals?) Tommy mentions in this 
connection his great appreciation of the per- 
mission given him two months before his 
release to grow his hair and comb it, "so that 



GOOD THINGS IN PEN 85 

it will look like a man's instead of being 
shorn like a sheep." 

It would seem too as though convicts were 
encouraged to make good use of their spare 
Made in— ti me - Very cleverly done is some 
Walla of the curio work in the way of 

Walla canes, picture frames, boxes inlaid 

with abalone shells, and various things made 
of bones. A curio case is maintained at the 
showroom, and visitors are glad to buy 
things, many of which have intrinsic merit. 
Each man gets full credit for all sales, and 
everything is deposited to his credit, to be 
drawn on from time to time for materials or 
personal purchases. It is not infrequently 
the fortune of men to have a fund of one 
hundred dollars to their credit when dis- 
charged on which to begin anew. The State 
too makes a little contribution to a man's new 
start. He gets his suit, a new one, though 
made of what the cons, call "bulls wool" — 
which becomes greenish-yellow after a little 
wear. The derby hat is all right, as is also 
the five dollars in cash and a ticket in any 
direction covering two hundred and fifty 



86 SCOTTY KID 

miles — enough to take one into the next 
State, says Tommy, which in this case hap- 
pened to be Idaho. 

We get a good word about the Sunday 

services* It appears that at this time there 

were no chaplains, and volunteers 

Audiences conducted services every Sunday, 

None too and all the convicts were expected 

Dtepowd to he P resent in the lar S e din " 
ing hall. It is easy to imagine 

the bitterness that burned in many a breast, 
and there is little doubt that the very men 
who have won the kindly thought of Brother 
Tommy (from his new point of view) are 
anathematized in the most vitriolic manner 
by many another. Even Jesus Christ had 
just as wide a variance of judgment passed 
upon his utterances — another illustration 
of the parable of the different grounds 
on which the seed fell. This is to account, 
partly at least, for the savage things that 
are said by ex-convicts and visitors con- 
cerning the sermons of prison chaplains. 
The salutary message is by no means pleas- 
ing to all hearers. Singing is always wel- 



GOOD THINGS IN PEN 87 

come — which fact, by the way, by no means 
determines its religious value. This might 
be stated as a corollary of the preceding 
proposition, as follows: The message pleas- 
ing to all hearers is by no means salu- 
tary. Perhaps a larger application of this 
truth might be made of church choirs. 

So you have preachers "that put the cons, 
to sleep." Heigho! And whose fault is 
Responsi- that? It is too late to inquire. 

Sleep f ° r We mi S ht " share and share alike " 
During in the odium involved in that 

Sermons statement, and let the volunteer 
preacher off with only his fifty per cent of 
blame. Meanwhile any of us who are dis- 
posed to occasionally tell a message to con- 
victs may be pardoned for thanking God that 
we do not have to do it every Sunday. 

But there was "that elderly woman known 
as Mother Smith." Many years of loving 

ltr% . . service had earned for her the 

Plain and 

Common right to the name "Mother." 

Mother "Plain and common" the boy said 

she was, like the very best things 

we have in life. And she was not afraid to 



88 SCOTTY KID 

pray and preach and sing the good news in 
the plainest, tenderest way. "The wonder 
of it is that the cons, would sing for her and 
with her?" No, that's not the wonder; it 
would be far more wonderful if they did not. 
Not the first six months, mind you. Doubt- 
less Mother Smith had her times of perilous 
"try-out" while these wolves of society were 
determining in their sordid minds what sort 
of game she was trying to play, and to beat 

her to it. The counterfeit sort of 
Mothering "mothering" which well-disposed, 

sentimental women have tried to 
pass on convicts is trampled under foot 
while ravenously the herd turn and do what 
rending they may. No, this "mothering" 
business is perilous. The real kind has paid 
its price for maternity ; it knows a suffering 
of sympathy. Hers was readily accepted at 
full value in the pen. So Mother Smith has 
a wider sonship than any one knows unless 
she herself has gone over to the other side, 
where she may safely bear the knowledge. 
Just before she casts her crown at the feet of 
Him who loved her and gave himself for her, 



GOOD THINGS IN PEN 89 

some winged "minister" may enjoy her 
wonderment when he shows her the number 
of stars in it. 



CHAPTER VI 

FREE FROM THE LAW 

There's the five dollars. What will he 
do with it? What would you do with five 

dollars under the circumstances? 
Spend It? ^^ e choice would determine much 

concerning your bent and f urnish 
a fair basis for judgment as to just how you 
would turn out — the net effects on you, say, 
of that beneficial system called the pen. As 
for the Kid, he wants two drinks of whisky, 
and gets them forthwith. It is a good long 
time since he had one even, and number two 
must have been sheer bravado, the intoxica- 
tion of freedom. Next on the bill of wants 
comes a sack of Bull Durham — we have no 
Tobacco desire to advertise that particular 
and Booze, brand, so are constrained to say 
Copartners ^&\ ^ e association of the two ar- 
ticles is all too frequent. A reformed drunk- 
ard once said that he had never known a con- 
firmed drunkard who was also a tobacco user 

90 



FREE FROM THE LAW 91 

to break away successfully from the drink 
habit without cutting loose from the tobacco 
habit also. If he did not cut out the weed, he 
almost inevitably fell to the booze. There 
are psychological grounds for such a belief. 
But to return to the Kid "blowing in" that 
five dollars: next came the cigarettes, and 
then (significant of the opium fiend) he must 
have chocolate candy, soft and rich. We 
have friends, not all feminine, who after an 
enforced diet such as we have outlined at 
Walla Walla, would have put some of their 
five dollars into chocolate creams, quite irre- 
spective of the dope fiend's excuse. 

Are you happy, O Scotty? "Aye, to be 
free." He is restive, however, as he tells us, 
in the thought that somehow the world has 
moved on ahead of him, and in the suspicion 
too that everybody knows him to be a re- 
leased con. 

It is characteristic of his devil-may-care 

How Unac- kind that he must blow in all the 

customed fiye doUars first rfd in « on cush „ 

Affluence 

Breeds ions" as far as the ticket would 

Profligacy ta fc e> \fc e a "bum sport/' before 



92 SCOTTY KID 

resorting to the old methods. Three years 
taken out of any profession would render 
hesitant any, even the most expert practi- 
tioner. Beating one's way on trains re- 
quires nerve, and that may have suffered 
some deterioration in our recently sheltered 
existence. Nevertheless, there is nothing for 
it, but that we must beat our way to Green 
River, Wyoming. Did you think that a man 
on a careful diet for three years— we trust 
that we made it plain that the Kid dieted — 
could take the Walla Walla mixture (his 
first purchase) and "get away with it"? 

Only as far as Wyoming. Now 
Paying the J . • i.- u n 

Price we P a y the price which was all 

down on the list, had we but 

known it. The Kid is terribly sick, and with 

weakness, nausea, and painful neck spends a 

few wretched days, begging mostly for 

money. The first dollar goes to a Chinaman 

for yen shee opium to be eaten, partly to 

deaden pain and partly to inspire him with 

illusions which appeared to be something 

like courage. 

At this point comes in the "geed" neck and 



FREE FROM THE LAW 93 

the doctor. This breaking out on the neck 

_ into offensive looking sores is 

Compensa- ° 

tion, Even tubercular, so the doctor says. 

ina"Geed" jj e did no ^ sa y so then, but it was 
Neck 

the general testimony of physi- 
cians elsewhere that the sort of tubercular 
glands which Scotty had was quite incurable. 
But, at any rate, he advised this patient to 
go to the Hot Springs in Arkansas and take 
the treatment. He did more ; he helped with 
money and supplied a testimonial letter — 
"To whom it may concern" ; and the Kid saw 
to it that it concerned a goodly number. It 
was urged that all kindly people might help 
the poor, afflicted one to the Hot Springs, 
and added that he was "worthy." "The 
Worthy, or doctor must have been a prophet 
Just when he used that term 'worthy,' 

Needy? say you. Ah, this "worthy" busi- 
ness is difficult. Who is, pray? If it is 
"needy" you mean, the Kid can qualify, 
which remark applies likewise to the seedy 
bum who frequently comes into your office. 
He claims to be worthy, while he is simply 
needy, even as you and I. As to indiscrim- 



94 SCOTTY KID 

inate giving, that is another thing, but the 
Associated-Charities people have dinged that 
bogy into us till we are all happily justified 
in keeping our reluctant dollar in our willing 
pocket. Anyway, the letter helped the Kid 
mightily, so that by the aid of the daily con- 
coction of yen shee (varied by a little cocaine 
sniffed up the nose) he reached Colorado — 
in the direst want? Not at all. He never 
made less than five dollars a day including 
his meals. At Trinidad, Colorado, they 

m%. « ±<u seemed to be "wise" to the Kid's 
The Path to 

Freedom— industry. He was there arrested 
Unsightly f or begging in every store on the 
main street. It is probable that 
another use for the "geed" neck occurred to 
him here. The police looked at that neck and 
considered possible doctor's bills, not to 
speak of contagion, and they concluded that 
it would be cheaper to give the offender 
forty-eight hours notice to quit their town 
than to punish. The obvious moral is that 
we all are tempted to "pass up" our prob- 
lems to some one else. The problem in this 
case was only too glad to be passed on, save 



FREE FROM THE LAW 95 

that he had done a good business there and 
liked every one, as he says, "except the bull 
that pinched me." 

Through Texas in a boxcar, fast asleep by 
virtue of the yen shee, stopping at various 
towns, and finally into Arkansas, the account 
makes interesting reading, had we the space 
for it. 

No more railroading for a while. The 
program now calls for bathhouse treatment. 
The bums there said that only 
paupers were admitted free to the 
Government Hot Springs for treatment. 
All right : it is easy to swear to being a 
pauper, and soon he has a month's ticket 
which entitles him to a bath every morning. 
This means an hour of a hot pool in company 
with others suffering from long-standing dis- 
eases. There is some of the water to be taken 
internally, and then, when one is cooled off, 
there is the whole afternoon for one's chosen 
profession. Now, besides the oldtime lux- 
uries to be obtained by begging there must 
be added certain blood medicines. Quite 
luxurious beggary this, and three months and 



96 SCOTTY KID 

a half of it. Then, not cured but very much 
better, comes a trip through Oklahoma and 
the Indian Territory — what shall we call it? 
— a professional side trip. 



CHAPTER VII 

TRAVELING 

This tramp business is rambling even to 
tell about it. It is sordid too, and leads to 
Wander- no greater respect for one's kind, 
Lust but it was the Kid's life and not 

without human interest. It is conceivable 
that there are statistics of these Bedouin 
tribes in America, with some more or less 
artificial classification of them. They all 
travel, both to avoid changes of temperature 
and work. In the approach of winter most 
of them migrate. To be caught by snow 
and ice while still "on the road" is to court 
being called a "y a P>" which signifies that 
such a one must be "soft in the nut." To be 
sure, not all go to warmer climates. Some 
of the wisest old guys hire a joint with sim- 
plest sort of outfit and stock up with food 
and tobacco and other luxuries and wait for 
spring. Such, of course, have to save for it 
out of their earnings ( ?) during the summer. 

97 



98 SCOTTY KID 

The Well able are some of them to do 

Law of so. The majority, perhaps, make 

Migration for Lower California) or New 

Mexico, or even Florida. In summer, back 
streams this flotsam (or is it jetsam?) north- 
ward, where under open skies, which look 
down now and then on friendly haymows, 
foraging may be done in the neighborhood of 
prosperous and industrious society. In the 
wake of this army (it perhaps resembles an 
army of worms more than anything else) 
can be traced robbery and all sorts of crime, 
while the streets of the city are infested with 
quite varied efforts to get something for 
nothing. 

Somewhere on the mainland is a town 
called Muskogee. Here it was that the Kid 

Capitalist, experienced that which we will 
but tell somewhat as he relates it. "I 

ungry was plinging on the stems of 
Muscogee for nearly one day. I had 
bummed seven plunks, and that night I went 
to the express office and got an order for 
seven dobbies, so that I would have it when 
I rambled back to Hot Springs to boil out 



TRAVELING 99 

my disease. With the permit I had for free 
baths I could cash this order to pay for my 
floppins and scoffings. So after I had the 
money order all my money was gone and I 
discovered I was very hungry. It was a very 
crimpy [cold] night and freezing, and there 
were very few people on the stems, so I tried 
my best to bum me a few cents to get me a 
flop. But I failed, so I said, 'I will hunt me 
up a bull and ask him to let me 

in a Storm ^°P * n a can over n ight, as it is too 
crimpy to railroad out of the 
burg/ A bum would croak on a night like 
this on a rambler. So I moped around and 
finally I met a bull. The way I knew him 
he had his tin can stuck on his chest [that 
was merely his official star] with his number 
on it, and the sheriff was with him. Then I 
begged both of them official guys for a place 
to sleep in the can — told them too of my geed 
neck. The sheriff turned his spark on it to 
see. Then he said: 'Kid, we can't put you 
in the city jail, it is crowded. But there is 
a restaurant up on a certain street. You go 
up there and sit in the sitting room by the 



100 SCOTTY KID 

stove and behave yourself and you can stay 
there all night/ 

"That was kind of the bull, so I went up 
to the dump [you will remember that was a 
Fools that saloon] while the sheriff tele- 
"s m ff»° phones up to the chuck house 
Remained guys, preparing them for my com- 
to Pay jng. By and by I got there and sat 

up close to the smudge [fire — it does not 
somehow sound complimentary] in the main 
room. There was a place partitioned off like 
a box, where people sat to scoff [this does 
not mean offensive ridicule; it is just plain 
eating], when in come some Tommies [fast 
women] and sports. The call for oysters, 
some stewed, some raw and fried. Say, by 
this time I was tired and sleepy and would 
liked to have flopped in a bed, and now the 
smell of the oysters made me most hungry. 
I didn't have a bean to buy with, and I didn't 
have the gall to ask the chuck-house man, 
afraid that he might think I was a particular 
bum and that I was lucky to be at the smudge 
and out of the crimpy night. In comes the 
waiter where I was, and by this time I was 




THE ANDERSON PARTY IN HILO 



(see page 210) 




READY FOR SERVICE 



TRAVELING 101 

groaning inside for raw oysters. My nerve 
The Lure was coming back, and I braced the 
of the waiter and told him how sleepy 

I was, and that I could not rest 
my geed neck on that chair by sitting up 
straight. I asked him if I could not get over 
in the corner and flop under a table — all the 
time I was honing for raw oysters. I could 
not ask for them, and in the meantime an- 
other order came for them, which made me 
all the hungrier. After the waiter came back 
he said: 'Say, Bum, I will let you flop over 
in that little room where we store the chuck, 
and you can put the old clothes on the floor 
and make a pillow for your nut. I will call 
you at 6 a. m. before the day shift comes on/ 
Then he said good night and closed the door. 
Then I flopped down, still crazy for those 
raw oysters. I hadn't been down on the 
floor but a few minutes when I found that 
at my head on the floor was an open keg. 
It was full of raw oysters. There I lay and 
ate oysters till I could eat no more. At 
times the waiter would come into that same 
room and poke his mit into that same keg 



102 SCOTTY KID 

and get some oysters, I suppose for orders 
[thank God you and I were not eating there 
that night], and whenever he came I made 
out that I was sound asleep. After he was 
gone I would reach out my hand and get my 
heart's desire [we concede that the difference 
between your heart and your stomach was 
not appreciable in those days, Brother 
Tommy]. Next morning I woke up and 
The had a little breakfast just for a 

Disillusion stall. Couldn't eat much — told 
o atiety ^ e g U y that I was sick to my 
stomach." And well you might be. That 
"stall" figure is not so hard. It must have 
been rather burdensome business covering 
the tracks of the oyster raid with a half- 
hearted attempt at breakfast. The next day, 
like a good many others, is a chronicle of 
rambling on a rattler, but it is not pleasant 
to think of possible effects on the patrons 
of that "chuck"-house, even before people 
knew enough to be hygienic. 

There is nothing really "nice" about the 
bumming business. We must get used to all 
sorts of downright meanness and trickery if 



TRAVELING 103 

Preying on we S° further. How is this, for 
the Sym- instance ? Suppose you had 
pat etic worked in the railroad line, had 
"braked" it for a while, enough to entitle you 
to become a member of a union. If you 
could make a line of talk in connection with 
railroading you could get a job for a week 
or two once a year. You could get along the 
rest of the time, but would you? There's 
the union card. We do not pretend to say 
what could be done with one now, but at the 
time of the story, a con. could travel all over 
the State of Texas and other States, "flash- 
ing" the union card to his brothers and show 
perhaps a "wrapped" arm, purposely fixed 
to capture the sympathy of the big-hearted 
railroad "brothers." By the way, the tech- 
nical name for this sore arm is a "bug." It 
is fixed with a little acid and salve put on it. 
The "bug" is a well-known institution and 
it would bring more money daily than a good 
mechanic could earn. Maybe working the 
"brotherhood" dodge is not so easy as it was, 
but it never was anything but contemptible. 
To be sure, the "geed" neck of the Kid was 



104 SCOTTY KID 

no "bug" in the truest technical sense, but he 
used it as though it were. Not only did he 
use the Doctor's certificate, as told above, 
but it was easy to show the neck itself, the 
very loathsomeness of which could hardly 
fail of promoting sympathy, and be it ad- 
mitted by all of us that to give money is the 
easiest and quickest way to express sym- 
pathy and at the same time rid ourselves of 
any further responsibility in the matter. 
Think of getting from three dollars to as 
high as fifteen dollars in one day — all ex- 
pressing that queer mixture of human senti- 

The Cheap- ment > namel y> V^Y* abhorrence, 
est (Most and desire of complete riddance, 
harmful) The Kid tells us later that he 

Getting learned to inflame the neck and 
Rid of a bring out its worst features to en- 
large his revenues. Of this more 
anon. Just now we are horrified to find that 
the creation of side partners and helpers in 
this loathsome trade, brought into being a 
systematic effort to entice boys into the same 
sort of life. To a boy listener it is not hard 
to throw a glamour over the roving free exist- 



TRAVELING 105 

Leading- ence, freedom from work and re- 
Boys straint. Then generous distribu- 
Astray ^ Qn Q £ can( jy 5 i ce cream, and 

even cigarettes, gets the entree, and the 
stories of travel and wonders of the world 
(some imaginary, such as "lemonade 
springs" and "cigarette groves"), and much 
flattery, finish the business. Suggestions of 
easy money, "cracking a peat" (which you 
will remember is getting into a safe, with 
some of the crudeness of the crime eliminated 
by the figurative language) — all this stirs 
up the cupidity of the boy, and the first 
lesson in beating his way on a train comes 
next perhaps. He is getting to be rather 
proud of his relations with his "Jocker," or 
master bum, and he is ready perchance to 
have the "bug" burned into his arm with 
acid. It is no difficult step for him to go 
from house to house with his "hard-luck 
story" to the effect that he has no people and 
wants to get some money to see a doctor. 
He gets considerable money, of course, folks 
being tender-hearted to a surprising extent, 
notwithstanding the number of times they 



106 SCOTTY KID 

have been imposed upon, and the "Jocker" 
(or is it joker?) drinks it up at the saloon. 
After traveling with this sort of company 
the boy soon "falls" for some misdemeanor 
or crime and lands up in the pen or asylum, 
to finally develop, perhaps, into the most 
hardened criminal, and maybe end his life 
on the gallows. 

It takes more than ordinary talent to bum 
in a big city like Chicago. It is something 
Rising in even to get there. The Kid 
One's "floated into Shi" inside of a box- 

_ onto car - The seal had to be forced, 
Chicago and he rode quite comfortably on 
some sacks of wheat. He had his prefer- 
ences for certain streets while he honored the 
city with his presence. He liked the "stem" 
called Clark, where he hung out in a "dump" 
— please do not lose sight of that most fra- 
grant name for the saloon. Heard ye ever 
of "Mulligan Stew"? This White Palace 
supplied it, as a sort of free lunch — to be 
technical, "free with every scoop he slopped." 
Was there not even a greater "barrel house" 
in Shi called "Hinky Dink's," noted not 



TRAVELING 107 

only because it contained the largest bar in 
the city, but because you could meet the fin- 
est assortment of bums, yeggmen, cats, 
rough-necks, and blanket stiffs and "Indians 
of every tribe." 

As suggested before, the Kid did his 

"plinging" on Clark stem, Van Buren, and 

Canal. Oak Park, the resort of 

"Bu*" the " sweU S u y s " was not tot ally 

ignored in his professional experi- 
ments. Many a day he says he has begged 
from three dollars to six dollars a day out 
there, "plinging on the strength of my gen- 
uine bug;' (What! Proud that the "bug 5 ' 
is genuine and no counterfeit ! Assuredly no 
professional is immune from pride.) He 
recounts a bet he made with a "stiff" (no 
meaning — just a playful way of referring 
to any third person) that he could ramble 
down the stem where the Tommies were and 
get two bucks quicker than any yegg or 
"throw-out" in Chicago. ( That "throw-out" 
needs explanation. He is a variety of yegg- 
man who is able to put himself in temporary 
contortions — leg or arm out of joint — for 



108 SCOTTY KID 

begging purposes. It is clever business, net- 
ting big returns.) He started to pling, 
and in half an hour he had his two dobbies. 
The performance brought him into rather 
dangerous notoriety; quite a crowd of guys 
gathered, which brought the bull on the heels 
of the crowd, who forthwith threatened to 
arrest the chief performer — the Kid. You 
see, he was blocking the sidewalk. The curi- 
ous were gazing on the "geed" neck, and now 
the magic of it must be enlisted, to work on 
a new subject. The cop too will gape on the 
wounds (the arch-faker says he "flashed" on 
him the "geed" neck) and then he pays his 
reluctant tribute. "He turns his head like 
as though he was sore and mopes away." 
Now, there is nothing for the Kid to 
do but keep the appointment with the 
"stiff" and slop at his expense at the barrel 
house. 

No less reprehensible is the story of work- 
ing a town in Iowa. This time kicks [shoes] 

were made the excuse. The 
K'^ks scheme is to get a number of pairs 

for sale. At first there must be a 



TRAVELING 109 

very bad pair which the ingenious collector 
must put on and show from house to house. 
His story runs somewhat like this: "Please, 
lady, can you let me have a better pair of 
shoes than these? I am applying for a posi- 
tion as a clerk and am hindered by the looks 
of my shoes — my only pair/' Of course 
she will. Here's an excellent pair of her 
husband's that hurt his feet a little. Will 
they do? Aye, they will. It should come 
easy for a man half Irish to thank her 
warmly for the kindness and also for the 
extra bit of small change which is apt to come 
with it. A little "cache," or hiding place, is 
the next need quite easily arranged for. 
Then is our plausible visitant ready for a 
talk of the same kind at the next house. This 
kindly little Iowa town furnished the Kid 
with eight pairs of good kicks (that they 
might have been the real thing, applied where 
they would do the most good !) and all in two 
hours. Out of this number the new owner 
may fastidiously note the points of merit and 
appropriate to his own uses one pair — sort 
of promoter's preferred stock. All the rest 



110 SCOTTY KID 

can be taken — were taken — to a cobbler's 
and sold for fifty cents per pair. 

Another picture, perhaps the last of its 
kind. It is the triumph of the yeggman's 
art. This one belongs to Colton, Cali- 
fornia, and after a few hours our hero 
(though there is little of the heroic about 
him) in the pursuit of his profession had 
secured six dollars from stores and business 
houses. (It can readily be deduced that 
women in the kitchens are not the only sof i- 
hearted prey of the beggar.) Some of this 
money was obtained by reclining— quintes- 
sence of indolence— on the street, technically 
called "flopping." (Now we are all taking 
stock of our experiences to see whether we 
were ever "taken in" in that way. "Guilty," 
say you. "Same here," say I.) At four 
Pinched o'clock a bull "glued" him, and he 
for was charged with vagrancy. 

opping "y a g ranC y| an d h e with good 

money on him!" It seems that quite unnec- 
essary impertinence on the part of the Kid 
in his answers to the judge aggravated the 
sentence, and he got "thirty days" — a nom- 



TRAVELING 111 

inal sentence, as we shall see. His time was 
to be "done" in San Bernardino, which name 
seems to have evolved a show of elephantine 
playfulness on the part of the bums, who 
affectionately dubbed this town "Sand Bag 
McGinness." So that night, over went the 
Kid in custody of the bulls to "S. B. M." 
which institution at that time swarmed with 
"cats" et al.j doing small sentences. The 
Kid's plan must have matured after the 
second day, for it was then that he hollered 
about his "geed" neck. "I made up my mind 
to put the fear in all the cats and bums in the 
can ; then later to let it work on the can offi- 
cials." The first chance came on the way to 
work to "flash" the sores on all the "cats." 
"What is it?" said some. It is this, that, and 
the other thing, from consumption to the 
common and nameless price of unclean liv- 

A Master- in g> the y said - "Queer ideas," 
piece of thinks the Kid. Anyway, they 
Finesse are g e n[ n g a j^ timid and may 

soon be stampeded. "So I went and 
washed my sores in sight of them where 
they drink. On my tin can I wrote 'Poison' 



112 SCOTTY KID 

on a piece of paper and warned the bums, on 
pain of getting my disease, not to use my 
cup." Then comes the protest. Why not? 
Have not even the "cats" the right to at least 
one life (not liberty; surely not the pursuit 
of happiness, unless such pursuit is confined 
within the somewhat narrow limits of Sand 
Bag McGinness?) 

Let us see what will come of this. "Say, 
them cats and stiffs made a holler. It got to 
the ears of the can bulls quick enough and 
the jailer got scared." The croaker must be 
called. He (the doctor) was frankly not 
pleased with the thought of this patient in 
his hospital, and he of the "geed" neck was 
persona non grata to the bums who represent 
all there is of public sentiment in the can. 
Now, Mr. Sheriff, the matter is "up to you." 
Trained in a school of politics, this man 
Move On! kn° ws what to do. "He called me 
before the city bulls with their tin 
cans shining on their chests and said, 'Kid, 
if you will get out of town we'll let you out 
of jail/ Was it manifestly none of the 
sheriff's concern where he went after that? 



TRAVELING 113 

Let the next sheriff see to it. Marvelous it 
is too, to note the perfect accord of the Kid 
and the sheriff. Negotiations are soon con- 
cluded for a complete and final separation. 



CHAPTER VIII 
DRAWBACKS TO BUMDOM 

Before we leave the bum it is due us to 
get his real opinion of the game. "Not all 
sunshine and roses?" we ask. 

"Say, it is fierce when a fellow gets ditched 
from a train [this means put of], especially 
in a desert, ten or fifteen miles from a town 
in Arizona or Mexico, where it is one hun- 
dred and thirty degrees — say around 
Phoenix or Yuma. And then you are 
hungry too, can't get a thing, for there are 
no houses on the railroad, Only cactus and 
Sunshine sagebrush as far as the eye can 
but No reach. Coyotes howling at night. 
Then is when a bum will be glad 
to pick up orange peelings or an apple which 
has become crisp in the hot sun since it was 
dumped out of some train. How good those 
peelings taste when a man is hungry [this 
reflection suggests the suspicion that we have 
never been really hungry], and how glad one 

114 



DRAWBACKS 115 

is to suck a piece of cactus as a substitute 
for water, and so thirsty that your tongue 
gets thick. Then there are the soles which 
burn like fire, the balls of the feet tender 

from counting the ties with each 
Tear step. How stiff and sore the legs, 

hips, and ankle bones become! 
And the shoes get cut to shreds on the sharp 
rocks. Then there are the splinters to be 
picked up from the ties, while the stomach 
raves like a starving bear for chuck." 

We wonder, if it often occurs to most of 
us, how unpopular the tramp really is. 

Here's a picture the Kid paints: 
Love Me "How those city and country 

Moss Backs are sore at harmless 
greasy coats like you and me! How they 
stick up shingles at house doors or on the 
fence with this written: 'Beware of the Dog,' 
'Tramps keep out, 5 'No tresspassing,' etc. 
They have the dogs all right. You stand 
for the vicious bulldogs, and the little rat 
terriers are biting at your kicks as you pass, 
while some of the shepherd dogs have been 
known to tear men's coats and to bite off 



116 SCOTT Y KID 

some of the buttons from his strides." 
(These last are trousers, if it please you — 
just "pants" to the bum.) "Even the school 
children have been taught that if they meet 
a poor, harmless tramp on the road, they 
must turn and run a half mile in the other 
direction to keep from meeting him." 
(Hold hard, Scotty. Maybe that word 
"harmless" is begging the question a bit. 
May there not be plenty of authentic cases of 
not so very harmless encounters to give 
ground for some of that fear, which, as you 
say, "turns them greenish yellow like a 
corpse, with their little hearts beating in 
their breasts as if they had met the devil." 
Nay! One of the blessings of a land we 
know— not so far away — is that this trafcnp 
fear — justified or causeless — is well-nigh re- 
moved from our children. Twenty-one hun- 
dred miles of ocean pathway affords poor 
tie-counting facilities.) 

Again, as an evidence that the life is no 

incon- sinecure all the time, be it remem- 

venient bered that our nomad must be on 

ermnals ^ move sometimes in the rainy 



DRAWBACKS 117 

season. "Many a time, beating it on a 
train, I have jumped off into a pool of water 
three or four feet deep. This was just before 
reaching a freight yard to keep from being 
glued by the railroad fly bull." (Strange 
confusion of language, or is it the choice of 
two evils — this getting a good soaking to 
avoid getting stuck up?) In Canada and 
Minnesota he tells us that blizzards are not 
friendly to foot travelers, and we unhesitat- 
ingly believe it, and let it go at that. In 
Texas and Oklahoma are the sand storms, 
filling hair and eyes and causing the face to 
burn like fire and keeping your blinks sore 
and bloodshot for days. 

Perhaps the worst trial of all is the fre- 
quent sentences for vagrancy. Five to 
twenty days in a city jail may not look so 
bad on paper; but if there is no fresh air 
and the cell is filthy; if you have to sleep 
between dirty greasy blankets which are as 
populous as a monkey, perhaps no bum is 
quite indifferent to such a state of things. 
"He breathes the filthy odors. Ofttimes 
he gets some disease, and when released 



118 SCOTTY KID 

slips easily into a potter's field or an insane 
asylum." 

A Personal Episode 

"One time I was bumming a ride under a 
passenger in Arkansas. I had a few pennies 
- .. in my strides. While the train 

nessof dashed on through the darkness 

Railroad an( j j}y e ra i n? we smashed right 

into a big bowlder that had fallen 
on the track, part of which was shoved off 
by the cowcatcher, while pieces of it got onto 
the rail and were crushed over. The train 
was stopped. Part of that bowlder had 
struck the air-brake rod and bent it, near 
my head, where I was sitting on the rod be- 
tween the two wheels of the Pullman. The 
trainmen came to look under the Pullman. I 
jumped out, and they went in there with 
tools and straightened out the rod, while the 
conductor said to me in his gruff voice, 'Say, 
you bum, keep off this train or I'll knock 
your block off. 5 I felt bad, for I was very 
sick that night. My neck pained me bad. 
I heard some one say that it was about ten or 



DRAWBACKS 119 

fifteen miles from Little Rock and here we 
were in the woods. 

"I thought to myself, 'My God, if I don't 
get a chance to ride this train, I will die out 
here. 5 No houses, cold, dark, and 
raining fiercely/ 5 Something said 
'Pray,' and I prayed. Mother had told 
me when I was a wee tot of a boy that God 
hears and answers prayers. So I prayed. 
I said: 'My God, I'm so sick. Help me get 
into the city of Little Rock. Amen.' The 
superficial and obvious thing about that 
prayer is its brevity. But you can depend 
upon it, there's not enough virtue in brevity 
to draw down a good-sized answer from even 
an All-Merciful Father. Here was a case of 
absolute human extremity. 'Out of the 
depths, I cried unto thee.' 

"In a minute or so the engineer came along 
and said to me, 'Kid, where are you going?' 
I said, 'To Little Rock.' 'Are you sick?' 
I answered, 'Yes, sir, and in much pain.' He 
said, 'Get up there in the cab' — which I did. 
So I rode on the engine between the engineer 
and fireman into Little Rock." 



120 SCOTTY KID 

Here's the way the Kid perorates: (We 
should have said "Tommy"; the Kid never 
had any such notion.) "I claim that God 
answered a sinner's prayer in this case." 

There are two propositions involved in the 
foregoing, to neither of which do we care to 
dissent, namely, that the answer was prob- 
ably genuine, and, secondly, that the peti- 
tioner could have laid no claims to sainthood. 
And the reason for the answer to the prayer 
may lie in the far-seeing, purposeful mercy 
of God. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE BIRTH OF BROTHER 
TOMMY 

And now, having another story, we ought 
to have another style. This would mean that 
if we were Isaiah I in the first in- 
fo ath' stance, we should clearly be Isaiah 
II at this break in the theme and 
narrative. Alas! Here is no Isaiah at all* 
and likewise little of the breathing of the holy 
impulse that characterizes the sacred writ- 
ings. We could less presumptuously hope to 
follow the lead of one of the many Kiplings 
in the matter of style. 

However, we have a birth and a "new 

creature." Let us do the telling of it as best 

we may. Here we are confronted 

Demanded ^^ some enormous difficulties. 
It is demanded of this "Brother 
Tommy" that he be a genuine miracle. He 
has got to be vitally different from that cast- 
off skin he has quitted which we called 

121 



122 SCOTTY KID 

"Scotty Kid." Maybe you will tell us that it 
takes years to change people, that growth is 
"first the blade, then the ear, after that the 
full corn in the ear," It isn't growth we are 
to talk about ; the miracle is the birth. We 
simply disavow any consideration of the 
problem of changing Scotty Kid. We 
couldn't do it in aeons of evolution. We do 
not even feel sure that Almighty God could 
or would. Our miracle is the existence of 
a new creature. Here's the proof in as brief 
a form as possible. 

Scotty was a dope fiend, drunkard, thief, 
trickster, and lazy past the telling. Tommy 
"New- Was born with diametrically op- 

birth" posite traits. He did not develop 

Marks them, in the important sense, 

though they have grown with the using. 
The time element was not appreciable in this 
miracle; it is not in births of the ordinary 
sort. Take a concrete instance of the new 
nature. You might concede that it were pos- 
sible for the Kid to drop all of his worst vices 
under the impulse, say, of a new emotion, 
but would you expect to find Tommy in- 



BIRTH OF TOMMY 123 

tensely energetic, which implies a positive 
virtue? In other words, would not the old 
tendency to "lie down" and let some one do 
the work — to bum his way along — tempt him 
to some soft religious "snap"? Nay, per- 
haps it is for the Almighty now to be sending 
ravens perpetually in the form of "brother 
this" or "brother that." On the contrary, we 
emphatically affirm that Brother Tommy 
was born with the sycophancy left out of his 
composition, and he has been the epitome of 
unselfish energy ever since. 

Solomon says, "There is a time to be 
born." Doubtless too there must be a place, 

even some cattle shed if there be 
Birthplace « . , . „ m , 

no room in the mn 8 1 ommy s 

entrance into life was a little rescue mission 
in Los Angeles. A man by the name of 
Trotter (it could hardly have been Melville) 
conducted this place,* and the Kid had been 
here once or twice before. The circum- 
stances were briefly these : 

"One night, after begging nearly all day 
in a town called Redondo, about twenty miles 



• The Union Mission of Los Angeles. 



124 SCOTTY KID 

The Last from Los Angeles, I returned 

of the with about nine dollars clear of 

"Old Man" t x. 4. 

my expense. 1 went to my room 

and dressed in a fine black suit of clothes and 

came out and met a few bums, all of whom 

I took into a barrel house and treated to 

drinks twice, which amounted to eighty-five 

cents. (Some took whisky and some beer.) 

Then I said good-by to them, and told them 

I would see them later. I probably had from 

eight to ten dollars in my pocket." 

This is worth noticing. No coffee and 
sandwich convert this. What he wanted was 
"to sit down and get quiet and hear some- 
thing different from bum talk — the guff 
which they deliver when half drunk, and their 
continual building of castles in the air." He 
insists that all of this air was "hot"; in the 
good old phraseology of the camp meeting, 
this man was "under conviction," or already 
in the pangs of childbirth ; but why he, rather 
than his late companions of the barrel house, 
who will say? We dare venture a guess, as 
may you. 

"So I went and sat down. The music 



BIRTH OF TOMMY 125 

seemed to appeal to me. But there was a 
Not lady singing a special song that 

Artistic, seemed to grip me." He does not 
Spiritual sa y that the singer was of the fin- 
Singing ished-artist type. We fancy not, 
and pay our glad tribute to just an ordinary 
voice laid on the altar of consecration and 
made the vehicle of a noble appeal set to 
melody. Another effective ministry : "There 
was a young woman who at times handed me 
a songbook and spoke gentle words to me, 
as though she were not afraid of me. This 
somehow made me feel at home, and it 
worked on me, and I thought that at least 
some one was perhaps interested in mf life, 
though she seemed utterly unconscious that 
her kindness was having any effect. 

"There were many good testimonies that 
night from all sorts of men — mechanics, and 
even lawyers and bookkeepers. Then there 
were some that had been bums and drunk- 
ards and dope fiends. This got me inter- 
ested, and I commenced studying as to 
whether some of the things they said might 
not be imagined rather than facts, and [he 



126 SCOTTY KID 

naively adds] whether they only spoke to 
hear their brains rattle, 

"There was one man in particular who 

started to testify, and he told how God had 

The really given his mind and heart a 

Efficacy of rest and peace that he never had 

es imony eX p er i ence( j before and which was 

beyond him to express in words. This man's 
talk seemed to convince me more than any- 
thing else that I heard. I took note of the 
phraseology he used, and it was clear that he 
was an ex-bum, and an educated one. He 
said that he had been saved from a life of 
robbery. He had been a habitual drunkard 
too, as well as a smoker. He had been in 
many pens and State prisons, and he told 
how he was so disgusted with that criminal 
life that one night he was on the verge of 
taking his life. Somehow he stepped into 
this very mission and heard some of the boys 
testify to that wonderful rest of God. He 
needed rest, so he went to God and found 
his rest by simply repenting and believing in 
Jesus Christ. This man is to this day a good 
Christian, and it was his testimony that God 



BIRTH OF TOMMY 127 

used to convince me and get me seeking sal- 
vation. 

"Well," I thought to myself of the last 
bum that spoke, "if God did that for him, he 

can do it for me." So I went up 
and See" *° *he a ^ ar when the invitation 

was given and got on my knees 
and prayed to God: 'Save me from sin and 
change my life. Amen/ " (If that was all 
the prayer, and it seems likely, it was even 
more laconic than the other one we men- 
tioned.) "Then I believed that God had 
saved me, because [how refreshingly matter- 
of-fact is this!] that prayer I prayed I meant 
with all my heart. Then I arose from my 
knees, and the leader who was in charge that 
night — a man by the name of Green, I think 
— said, 'Well, did you get saved?' I said, 
'Yes.' Now, I had no outward demonstra- 
Factsln- tion; nor did I shout or jump, as 
dependent some have been known to do. It 
o eeing wa§ nQ ^ SQ ^ m y convers i on- J 

was very quiet and looked like any other 
man, but I felt within me that I had done 
a manly thing when I prayed and meant 



128 SCOTTY KID 

business. I felt though that some there 
thought, 'That bum is around for a feed — 
something in the loaves and fishes line/ so 
common among mission bums. But no, I 
had the wherewithal to buy the loaves and 
fishes if I wanted them. What I was really 
after was to have my life changed. I went 
home with the little Testament that was 
given me, and that night I slept as sound as 
a baby. This was in November, 1905." 

That is no very extraordinary tale. One 
like it, save in minor details, could be told 
Marvelous, thousands of times every year 

though throughout the world. That does 
It Happen p 

Every not kill the wonder of it, as Car- 

Minute ]yj e reminds us. The chief marvel 
in a case like this of Tommy's is the tremen- 
dous contrast between that which preceded it 
and that which followed. It's the next morn- 
ing we are thinking about, and the morning 
after that, till the mornings stretch out into 
the years. 

"Next morning when I woke up I had no 
pains and aches that a dope fiend usually has, 
and, more than that, I had no desire for 



BIRTH OF TOMMY 129 

dope or the pill of morphine which 
Morning I usually took in the morning." 
(You may figure it, Tommy, that 
it was a sort of special Providence in 
your case, for many a man, equally sincere, 
has waked up in the morning with the same 
old pains and a raging appetite as usual. 
To such a man would have to come the try- 
ing experience of walking by faith and not by 
sight, until such time as the full deliverance 
was vouchsafed.) "I did not even smoke a 
cigarette, which before I always did, and I 
caught myself wondering, 'Such strange ac- 
tions for a dope fiend, not to take a pill or a 
smoke/ Then something seemed to say: 
'Why, last night you gave your heart to God. 
That's why you have no desire for these 
drugs/ Then I thought to myself, 'That's 
so. I did ask God to save me, and he must 
have done it. 5 " 

Does some one ask, "What is all this 'sav- 
ing' business?" It is a wonderful transfor- 
mation, to be sure, and it takes a 
Still Jacob good-sized vocabulary to cover it. 
The word "saved" is all right. 



130 SCOTTY KID 

Overuse of it may have dulled its signifi- 
cance. Have you a better word? However, 
in talking about the "new creature" that 
woke up that morning, no other phraseology 
seems quite as satisfying as that which 
startled the night-inquirer Nicodemus. It 
was a born-from-above baby Tommy that 
started out that day, wondering much, doubt- 
less, at the strangeness of occupying a body- 
tenement malodorous with the suggestion of 
its former occupant, Scotty Kid. Nor will 
the infant always succeed in banishing his 
predecessor once and for all, as the Israel in 
him has ahead more than one night battle by 
the brook Jabbok before Jacob is thrown out 
neck and crop and is known no more. 

What are we going to expect of an infant? 
"Not too much," say you? "Let him pule 
Th and wriggle, but of all things, 

Tragedy of keep him quiet. You mustn't 
Perpetual expect coherent talk." To which 
we reply, "For God's sake, let us 
not expect too little." We are always do- 
ing that very thing, and the poor, flabby, 
helpless creature never grows up, a mon- 



BIRTH OF TOMMY 131 

strosity terrible to contemplate — a perennial 
infant. 

No, your Paul, born on the Damascus 
road, is certainly not Saul, but he is some- 
Birth thing vigorous as soon as he gets 
—New his eyes open. The first thing no- 

Compan- ticeable about him is that he is 
classified differently as to his 
friends and companions. We all might as 
well notice that the new birth brings one right 
off and inevitably into a new family. This 
calls for separation. If it were not for that, 
the new birth might almost hope to be pop- 
ular among the butterflies of society and all 
triflers. Despite the efforts of the "modern 
theologians" to read it out of the process (if, 
to them, there be any birth process), the im- 
pression will prevail that it costs that very 
painful price, separation, to be "born from 
above," and we have good authority for it, 
that no Way can be termed popular that is 
called "strait" or difficult. 

"After my conversion I cut out the old 
associates — would meet them on the streets 
at times, speak a moment or two with them, 



182 SCOTTY KID 

Heaven- an( * then get away from their 

Taught company. It was because I knew 
Caution that if j stayed with them j 

would soon have to smoke or take a beer 
with them, and that I was afraid to do. It 
was clear that if I gave in on the smaller 
temptations, say one glass of beer, in a few 
hours I would be backslidden proper ["back- 
slidden proper" — that's a contradiction in 
terms for you], so I associated with Chris- 
tians." Now, that caution in a newborn babe 
is difficult to account for. How would it do 
to call it Christian instinct, seeing he was 
born with it? 

"I started to read the New Testament, 
and I could not understand parts of it." 
"Hard to What a comfort it is to have the 
be Under- doughty Saint Peter saying the 
same thing, or what perhaps is 
tantamount to it, when he writes of his "be- 
loved brother Paul's" letters, "in which are 
some things hard to be understood." 

Here's a phenomenon concerning the eye- 
sight of the newborn that has been often 
noted. "The heavens and the earth seemed 



BIRTH OF TOMMY 138 

new to me. That next day after 

c** 6 s " m y convers i° n *h e grass, the flow- 
ers, and the trees seemed more 
beautiful. Even the horses in the express 
wagons were changed for the better. And 
the old greasy-coated bums from the slums 
with their tough looks, red noses, and blood- 
shot eyes, were different. There was some- 
thing in me that seemed to look beyond their 
dingy outward appearance, with a wish to 
God in me that they might be saved/' 

It was not all plain sailing though. There 
was to be no perfect record of veering off 
from all dangerous or piratical craft, save 
for friendly aid and salvage. It seems to us 
we have read in some old book about a people 
passing along into an up-country who were 
warned not to mix with the quite attractive 
folk who lived along the road. 

Pilgrim's (We do much the same with our 
Progress x 

children.) It comes to us now 

that these — sojourners they called them — 
were forever forgetting and paying the price 
of it. So Tommy had a precedent, if no ex- 
cuse, for the following: 



134 SCOTTY KID 

"One night about two weeks after my eon- 
version, I met a friend of mine, a thief. I 

had 'done time' with him. He 
Beer "* loved me and I loved him. I told 

him of my conversion and the 
great change in my life, and he seemed glad 
to hear it. And to prove to me that he was a 
friend he said, 'Come in and have a beer in 
a private box/ " (How perfectly natural 
all that was! So much so that some reader 
may say, "Aye, and quite irreprehensible, 
too, save to a Puritan fanatic." Mark what 
follows, what is well-nigh sure to follow.) 
"I went in and had a beer with him, and when 
I came out I got terribly convicted, and I 
told him I had done wrong in yielding to the 
temptation." Two wonderful things: an in- 
ward monitor and a sensitive soul. And 
Friend Thief seemed to recognize the diffi- 
culty in part and said he "was sorry I had 
gone against my religion, though he could 
not see much harm in the social drink I took." 
New Taste (No, man. You can't "see." It 
as Well as is partly eyesight. Then, again, 
Sight y 0U j iaye no ligh^ because one has 



BIRTH OF TOMMY 185 

to be bom into this new world of sight and 
light.) "I felt bad in my heart that I had 
grieved my God and Jesus Christ, who had 
done so much for a rascal like me. As I 
walked home I bitterly repented and asked 
God to have mercy on me and that he would 
reclaim me. And he did, for I felt in my 
heart the moment he had forgiven me. As 
for the beer, that was the last, and I have 
never had a taste for it since." 

Look at this evidence of a still unobliter- 
ated streak of human nature, belonging to 
this time : "One day I wanted a street car to 
stop for me at a certain corner and take me 
on. This time I had my arms full of gro- 
ceries and was on my way to my room where 
I kept 'bach/ intending to cook my supper. 

I was feeling bad in my diseased 
Again— or neck and much out of sorts, but 
is it Just right with God in my heart. The 
Ji^? 11011 Hiotorman seemed to ignore me 

and the car passed on, leaving me 
standing in the rain. Before I thought I 
cursed that man, sending him to perdition 
and still some. I did not realize what I had 



136 SCOTTY KID 

done till after I had ripped it all out. Then 
I felt very sorry. I asked God to forgive 
me as I walked down the street, and I am 
sure that he did." 

It would appear futile enough to attempt 
to analyze the above experience — "Right 
with God" in one breath and hell's 
anathemas in the next! The law 
of human gravitation can accomplish marvels 
of downward flights from our peaks of exal- 
tation in an inappreciable fragment of time. 
That is part of the peril of spiritual moun- 
tain-climbing, for fear of which no true and 
hardy son of heaven will content himself with 
low levels. 

DIGRESSION 

We are not concerned with sequence in 
this narrative. It is consequence that most 
interests us. A real chronicler might tell you 
what happened next. You will content 
yourself with the reflection that you have to 
do with a narrator who is obsessed with the 
idea that what came along in this man's life 
had to happen as a consequence of sure- 



BIRTH OF TOMMY 137 

enough " anothengenesis" (Perhaps this is 
the last time we will dare to use this pedantic- 
looking word, and we do it this time to revive 
our slumbering antagonism to the word "eu- 
genics," and partly to relieve our "born- 
from-above" expression, lest perchance it be 
worn by overuse.) 

A babe, just born and intensely eager to 
pass along the word of his new life ! This we 
A dare affirm is the necessity of 

Spiritual genuine rebirth. It is the very 
Bed-Tester j tch of the Rew j if e to share it with 

others. "Not so fast," do you say? "Why 
such an evident exception among new con- 
verts? Do they all do so?" 

What we would like to do is to put the bur- 
den of proof on any of you when you claim 
that your hundreds of converts are "born 
from above." Are they, then? Let them 
make proof. Does torch after torch get its 
blaze from this new one ? Otherwise, where- 
fore alight? 

Tommy glows and burns and kindles little 
conflagrations. "The darkness compre- 
hendeth it not" — and cannot put it out. 



138 SCOTTY KID 

How he earns a living we hardly know. 
From the old point of view, what he gets is 
not a "living." He knows real scarcity 
often, such as the Kid, in his bumdom plenty, 
hardly dreamed of. He is hardening and 
toughening himself for the real fight of life, 
and occupied with real mission work the 
whiles, testifying wherever called for and 
making considerable trips into suburbs to 
help meetings. 



CHAPTER X 
A DOPE FIEND UNDER A HOUSE 

If we were permitted a text for the fol- 
lowing, we would make it "Condescend to 
men of low degree." Should a medical justi- 
fication be wanting, we have that of homeop- 
athy ready at hand, "Similia similibus cur- 
antur" which, being liberally interpreted, 
reads, "It takes a dope fiend to catch a 
dope fiend/' Here follows Tommy's nar- 
rative : 

"A Christian worker told me one day of 
a poor old bum who stayed down under a 
Way Down, house. It was a woman who tried 
and to influence him, and he took no 

Nearly Out no tj ce f h er# g j we nt down to 

the place, which was a large rooming house, 
in the rear of which was an alley, where were 
lots of swill barrels with garbage boxes and 
tin cans. Refuse from a store near by was 
piled here. But underneath the house was a 

139 



140 SCOTTY KID 

cellarlike place which seemed to be about the 
size of the floor of the house, and it was very 
dark. The height was about three feet and 
it was full of cans, cobwebs, and trash. 
There a pale-faced bum lay. He 
Too looked like a corpse lying there 

in a stupor by a sewer pipe. My 
pride seemed to get in the way to keep me 
out of that dark, dirty place, since I had to 
crawl on my hands and knees, there being 
no room to stand up. Finally I mustered up 
courage, and in I went on my knees, burst- 
ing through the cobwebs. 

"When I reached my man I discovered 
that he was a dope fiend of the worst type, 
using morphine and cocaine, and that he was 
now full of dope. He appeared dazed that 
a man dressed up should come into a place 
where a pig would hardly live. I shook his 
hand and told him I was his friend and had 
come to help him. I told him too that I had 
been a fiend and had been saved, and that 
the desire for dope and the habit that bound 
me had been taken out of my life. He then 
started to talk to me, telling me his troubles 



A DOPE FIEND 141 

and how the dope had degraded him. He 
said he had been a showman and a gambler 
and at one time quite well off. I came to 
find out that he knew my own brother, and 
was in the gambling business with him years 
before. 

"Then he asked me, ' What got into you to- 
day, and made you come into such a low, 
Aye> filthy place as this?' I told him 

What's in that God had made me come and 
You? that I was interested in his life 

and could yet see hope for him in restoration 
to manhood. I asked him if he was hungry. 
He said 'A little bit.' Then I said I would 
get him some nice 'scoffings,' such as cream- 
puffs, buttered toast, and hot tea, also a sack 
of good candy. Meanwhile, while I was talk- 
ing to him, he lit cigarettes and took a shot 
of cocaine into his arm. I never minded, but 
kept on talking, trying to win his confidence. 
'By the way, would you like some nice, well- 
done, greasy pork chops?' He answered 
'Yes/ so I went out from his den and bought 
some cream-puffs and a small lard can full 
of hot green tea, some greasy pork chops, 



142 SCOTTY KID 

and a sack of soft marshmallows with a little 
chocolate mixed. With my arms full of grub 
I came back to my fallen brother — a wander- 
ing star, as I used to be." 

Peril ftps & 

Meteorite (What an astonishing figure!— 
"Wandering" to be sure! well- 
nigh totally eclipsed, there under the house) . 
"There I put the stuff at his feet, and he 
thanked me with tears in his eyes, and seemed 
to enjoy the food. 

"While he was eating I told him how God 
had saved my life from habits similar to his, 
Stars Not and that God would do the same 
Always f or jj^ Then I prayed for him 
Beckoned briefly, gave him a little change, 
Oa and said good-by. At the mission 

I made a request for special prayer for 
him and made him a visit every day at his 
place under the house. After four days I 
made a date with him to take him to a pri- 
vate room I had rented for him, where he 
could wash up and put off his old greasy 
rags. I was at the corner after dark where 
I had agreed to meet him, but he never came. 
Next day I visited him again under the house 



A DOPE FIEND 143 

amongst the tin cans, took him something to 
eat, and made another date with him for the 
next day* I was not at all discouraged, be- 
cause I knew that one of the greatest weak 
points of a dope fiend is not to keep his word. 
Full of dope, he sleeps and forgets. So I 
exercised a lot of charity and patience with 
him, as I understood, being at one time in 
the same boat myself. I made six dates with 
him altogether, seeing him each day after 
each one. I fed him daily and talked to him 

on the Christian life. Finally I 
The Law of , . , -, .., 

Winning gave up trying to make dates with 

him, though I never gave up be= 
lieving and praying for his restoration and 
salvation. 

"In the meantime I went away to Canada. 
Later I returned to southern California, and 
one night in a mission a bright-looking, dark- 
haired, neatly dressed man came and shook 
my hand. He said, 'I am now saved from 
sin and dope.' He was the man I used to 
feed and pray for under the house among the 
cans and cobwebs." 



144 SCOTTY KID 

DIGRESSION 

"This day is salvation come to thy house/' 
What is the proof of it? Go back a bit, "If 
The Res- I have taken anything from any 
toration man by false accusation, I restore 
Test him fourfold." Yes, Zacchaeus's 

job was by no means easy, nor is it usually 
done in just that whole-souled way. Still 
(though we hesitate to grudge to Zacchaeus 
his meed of credit), at least he had enough 
to pay back in the princely way he offered to. 
Moreover, it is fairly clear that he meant it, 
or the Master's words had never been spoken 
and Salvation had stayed away. But what 
if he had no money when Salvation came? 

This is Brother Tommy's problem. Those 
bum-gleaned dollars were soon gone and Sal- 
in Lieu of nation was more than knocking at 
the "Four- his door. Salvation has arrived 
fold " and is going to stay. It is a dif- 

ferent problem from that of Zacchseus, but 
we are going to see whether the out-crop- 
pings of this same Salvation are not very 
similar. There have been things taken from 



A DOPE FIEND 145 

"any man," and the "restoring" begins to 
weigh on the mind of the man who has Sal- 
vation for a house-guest. "Fourfold" pay- 
ing is out of the question. Mayhap the pay- 
ing of principal without interest is even more 
than this son of Abraham can do. [We 
would do well not to overlook Tommy's 
claim to kinship, for is not Abraham rightly 
called the patriarch of the whole Faith 
family?] 



CHAPTER XI 
RESTITUTION 

The following is the story of Tommy's 
restitution : 

In the first place, the word is his. We 
have not put it into his mouth. Again, as far 
as we can understand, the idea is his. No 
man appears to have inspired the restitution 
obligation. Just how soon the Salvation 
guest stirred up the sensitiveness in his soul 
we do not know, but he says : "About a year 
and a half after I was saved I started to 
write letters and make restitution. There 
were some things I could not make right 
(like water spilt on the ground, which could 
not be gathered up again), but in answer to 
my questions, Bible teachers told me that 
what I could not make right — things not 
within my power — God would overrule. As 
to money, I used to say, 'You can't get blood 
out of a stone.' So I summed up the mileage 

146 



RESTITUTION 147 

that I had beat out of many railroads in the 
United States, which amounted to thousands 
of miles. How much money it was worth 
was beyond my calculating powers. You 
see, sometimes I rode on passenger trains, 
sometimes on freighters. So I started to 
write to the officials of these roads, telling 
them that I had stolen rides on their roads 

Computing ^ or e ^ eyen years, but that I had 
Transpor- lately been converted. I said I 
tation ji^ no j. j iave an y mone y i p a y f or 

the rides and was sick in my body, so I could 
not work to make money. I felt, though, 
that I ought to confess my faults to them, 
and I did not intend to hide anything from 
them. God had saved me from a criminal 
life." 

It must have been a fantastic confession, 
not without its humor. It covered rides 
among cattle and steers, sheep and pigs. It 
involved jockeying along on the back of a 
sheep or shivering in a refrigerator car in 
company with fruit. There was even less 
happy environment, like that of an oil car or 
coal bunker. Freight cars were ridable top- 



148 SCOTTY KID 

side and underneath, and the "blind" of 
which we have spoken was varied with com- 
plete prostration under passenger seats. 

Nor did he stop there: he intimated that 
as he could not pay, he was willing to stand 
any sort of punishment the railroads cared 
to inflict, and gave them his name and ad- 
dress. 

And what sort of an answer would you 
have given to that sort of a letter? You 
might have said, "The fellow is a crazy fool." 
Again, you might have been suspicious of 
some pious dodge whereby you were likely to 
be victimized. Some of us would have 
laughed and forgotten it. 

"Well, some of the railroad companies did 
not answer my letter. Something gave me 
We Wish ^ ie assurance that I had done my 
You Well, part, and that there was no 
further restitution possible toward 
those companies that did not answer. God 
would take the will for the deed. One day I 
received a letter from the Santa Fe It. R. 
Co. from Chicago. The writer, who was the 
president, said he had read my letter and he 



RESTITUTION 149 

was glad in the change in my life. He said 
that my confession was the best of its kind 
he had ever witnessed, and he said that the 
Company held nothing against me; and he 
wished me success and the good will of all 

men. Signed, R ." That one reply was 

contributive evidence of the sincerity of 
Tommy's letter. He goes on: "So you see 
how God worked on those railroad officials 
to get me out of a terrible debt. The devil 
could no more accuse me and throw it at my 
head that I was crooked and not converted 
—that I had beaten the railroads and never 
could pay the debt. All scores were off." 

Others besides the railroads had to be kept 
in mind if this restitution business was to 
A Sensi- amount to anything. A sensitive 
tivised soul develops a memory for things 

Memory j Qn g s j nce outlawed. "I also had 

to write to owners of grocery stores in my 
old home town, Kirkcudbright, in Scotland, 
and confess to them how I had stolen fruits, 
soap, eggs, whisky, and tobacco, perfume, 
fish, and meat. They wrote back forgiving 
me." 



150 SCO'TTY KID 

Another confession came nearer home and 
was not so easy. "I confessed to my sister 
how I used to steal out of her dry goods store 
[here follows a long list], besides money out 
of her till. She wrote back forgiving me all 
and wishing me Godspeed." 

Does it look a bit easy, and even sancti- 
monious? Then note the following: "I had 
No Grand- *° confess to the robbery of my 
stand niece's and nephew's savings bank 

y of a few dollars, all in nickels and 

dimes and red cents, and I sent bach the 
amount/ 3 Please get that. Just how that 
money was earned he does not say, but it 
was not easy. "This was a terrible cruci- 
fixion, but God gave me grace to do it, and 
then he blessed me for it. The way that 
thing worked out was wonderful. Those 
children became confident in the genuineness 
of my profession and they certainly believe 
to this day that their uncle is a real Christian, 
and the last I heard of them they were at- 
tending Sunday school regularly. 

"The rabbit skins do not come before my 
face any more when I pray." That is the 



RESTITUTION 151 

r bb't P^ °^ *^ e W ^°^ e b us i n ^ss. A real 
Skins and prayer is susceptible to atmos- 

a Clear pheres and obstructions. It must 
Look Aloft tiii! j 

be clear ahead, or heavenward — 

otherwise the situation is no better than once 
when the writer tried to look through the 
Lick Observatory telescope in a snowstorm. 
There it was little snowflakes that shut out 
heaven. A rabbit skin may obscure the 
vision. Even a wretched little shilling piece 
may do it. The rabbit skins were those he 
stole from a junk dealer in Scotland and 
sold for a few shillings, and it took a letter 
of confession to clean that window of the 
soul. The answer came in the unobscured 
heavens, not in any reply from Scotland. 
God has his own mail service, and no registry 
division is necessary to prove delivery at 
either end of the line. 

Just think of the burglary, graft, and petit 
larceny that seemed to be crusting irrepa- 
rably this man's vision. Think you that he 
would have ever won any clear way to the 
sunlight had he not dug and cut at the litter 
of obscuring things that were even worse 



152 SCOTTY KID 

than rabbit skins? "I never heard from any 
of my victims, and I felt that God was over- 
ruling the whole thing, for he knew that the 
few red cents I had to my name would never 
pay for all my stealing." 

"But there were small sums of money that 
were within my power to pay, and I paid 

TheResur- ^em, some to folks that never 
rectionof expected to get a bean. You 
A* eDea ts can 't imagine how the paying of 
those bills worked on them." 
(We can. It was as though one were to 
arise from the dead.) "It made them have 
confidence in me, 'A man of God F they told 
me so; 'To God be all the praise!'" To 
which we say, "Amen." A veritable resur- 
rection of dead debts is one of the proofs of 
the genuineness of the William A. Sunday 
campaign. New-born men want to pay their 
debts. New birth is as wonderful as resur- 
rection anyway. 

DIGRESSION 

As far as the facts are concerned, most 
any reader might have been willing to follow 



RESTITUTION 158 

us thus far, provided he is allowed to account 
for the phenomena in his own way. The 
facts themselves are not so very astounding, 
but that any sort of a modern rationalist 
(especially if he be equipped with a psycho- 
logical training) could readily account for 
them. But what will happen, we wonder, 
when the facts claimed transcend the realm 
of ordinary probability, and the conse- 
quences of the "birth from above" 
to Our are ma de to extend into other than 

Conserva- the emotional and spiritual realm? 
Friends Now, Brother Tommy, maybe 
you have been long since relegated 
to the company of the "fanatics/' and maybe 
you don't care. But we have the ordinary 
hesitancy to let an entirely new company of 
people call you that name, and besides we 
ourselves are just a little sensitive yet lest 
perchance we are so classed. Shall we tell 
them about that "geed" neck of yours ? Sup- 
pose we warn any that look for the manifes- 
tation of God only in the world of spirit, to 
just skip this part, for we honestly would 
like to have them join us later on. 



CHAPTER XII 
A "GEED" NECK 

First strip yourself to the waist. "What 
is the blue and white-and-mottled effect all 
over your chest and neck? Why, man, you 
are a mass of grizzly scars, as though you 
had been scalded and blistered all over your 
body/ 5 

Without telling him anything about our 
purpose, we inquired of one of the most 
What the reputable surgeons in our city, 
Doetor sending down Brother Tommy 
M with a letter asking for an exam- 

ination. The following was the reply: 

Dear Mr. R— — : 

This young man has had a most severe tubercu- 
losis of the neck glands, scrofula. He has recovered 
entirely. I think he has had also some pulmonary 
tuberculosis at the apex of the right lung, but both 
lungs are now sound. His heart is normal and very 
slow, only 55 instead of 72, which also shows that 
he is free from any tubercular lesion; . . . but 
the man is now in good physical condition. 

H , M.D. 

154 



A "GEED" NECK 155 

This opens the story. Now, Tommy, 
speak up ! You have said considerable about 
that neck. Let's be done with it. Fortu- 
nately for you, there are witnesses in plenty 
or we would have none of you ourselves, de- 
spite those desparately bad scars. 

"For six months after my conversion I 
was sick in my body from tuberculosis, which 

had been afflicting me for about 
Isn't It? eight years. I had contracted it 

in my three-years' term at the 
penitentiary, and it was all over my body in 
running sores, around my neck, down each 
of my shoulders. It seemed to be spreading 
and poisoning and eating into my flesh. 
Broadening like a young grape vine, it was 
broken out on both of my legs, and one sore 
the size of a dime came out on my cheek. 
These sores were always discharging and 
were very weakening, the pains at times 
seemed as though they would drive me mad. 
Many a time I wished to God I was dead, 
and, like Job, that I had never been born. 
I had been using remedies right along. At 
the time I speak of I had been in the hands 



156 SCOTTY KID 

of an Australian specialist for nearly a year. 
At the end of the treatment I was no better/' 

There were other forms of suffering. It 
seems before and after his conversion he was 
Socially shunned as a sort of pariah. 
Ostracized "They would not allow me in 
restaurants, nor could I get a bed 
in lodging houses, as the people were all 
afraid that I had a contagious disease. My 
appearance terrified some. Why, I have 
been refused a drink in a saloon, although I 
had the money to pay for it. Even the bums 
shunned me, because they said I made them 
sick. So in the old bum days I traveled a 
good deal by myself and slept in box cars, as 
I felt freer there. There was no hotel boss to 
reproach me nor tourists to criticize me. 
That's one reason [as we have said] why I 
used drugs and opiates to kill the pain and 
keep me from going mad. There were times 
I was so discouraged that I was tempted to 
suicide — just a simple plunge into the water, 
or an overdose of some of the poisons I 
knew." 

Of course this talk of drugs applies only 



A "GEED" NECK 157 

to the unconverted life, for "Never one time 

did I use drugs after I became a 

Many Christian. God gave me power 

Things of and grace to stand the pains of the 

-* 11 * . disease, and I was delivered of 
Physicians 

drugs at conversion. But I was 
not delivered of the disease. Finally I lost 
all confidence in medicines or doctor's 
remedies. I had spent nearly all I had for 
eight years and none had helped me. I be- 
lieve that many of those doctors had done 
their best, but, after all, they themselves were 
at sea, as far as being able to bring about a 
cure for me. You see, I had tried them fair. 
Sol made up my mind that I would cut them 
all out, even the little home herbs cures that 
were no better than the rest. I had been 
thinking for a long time since conversion that 
God would heal me, but probably through 
some medicine as an agent. At last I got 
convinced that the agent through whom God 
wanted to heal me was Jesus Christ. Then, 
when it was done, the real agent would get 
the credit, and not a drug or a bottle of medi- 
cine. 



158 SCOTTY KID 

"Now I know that God does permit people 
who have not the faith for healing to be cured 
Faith or by medicines. [Here he quotes 
Fanati- what will be conceded are au- 
cism? thentic cases of the use of remedies 

in the Scriptures, and he goes on.] My 
conviction was that God wanted me to fully 
trust him for healing without the aid of a 
physician or medicine. If I did, he would 
increase my faith and give me my healing, 
or cause others to have faith for me. I saw 
that healing was taught in the Bible, so I 
finally decided to have the elders of the mis- 
sion pray for me, lay their hands on me, and 
anoint me with oil. 

"I did it. The congregation also joined 
and prayed also for my cure, and from that 
time I started to feel better. In outward ap- 
pearance it seemed as though I was not 
better, but from the inside I was being 
healed, and at times I would testify that God 
was my healer and that he was healing me. 
0n9 Many good people thought I was 

Thing I out of my head. They said I was 
Know presumptuous in saying that I was 



A "GEED" NECK 159 

being healed. But that did not stop me 
from believing that God was healing me. 
This gradual healing kept up for six months, 
and at the end of that time I declare to you 
and to all the world that my healing has been 
complete up to this day. If I had to do day 
labor of any kind, I am certain that I could 
perform it and enjoy it too. For over four 
years I have not taken any medicine." 

Tommy adds: "Many friends have made 
apology to me now that they see I am really 
Imagined healed. Instead of its being pre- 
or sumption on my part, it is theirs, 

Genuine £ or ^^t faith on my part, and 

that exercised by Christian friends, through 
the Lord Jesus Christ, brought health to my 
body." And Tommy adds this sententious 
novelty: "Presumption is that thing that 
brings nothing but fear." 

But was it tuberculosis? Two reputable 
surgeons and physicians in the vicinity of 
Los Angeles, when written to, to confirm 
their previous statement concerning his con- 
dition, write as follows : 



160 SCOTTY KID 

March 13, 1912. 
To Whom it May Concern: 

I first met Mr. Thomas Anderson six years ago 
at Los Angeles Camp Meeting, and afterward on 
various occasions. He was suffering from a very 
aggravated ailment in the neck and throat — scrofu- 
lous glandular tuberculosis — one of the worst cases 
I have seen since practicing medicine fifty-two years. 
At times it appeared to partly heal up, but would 
return again with suppurating sores, accompanied 
by pain and great physical exhaustion. I have not 
seen Mr. Anderson for some years and, therefore, 
cannot say professionally what his condition now is. 
He was to my mind a hopeless incurable. If such 
conditions have now passed away, I can only believe 
that a higher poweT than man has taken his case 
in hand. S— S— , M.D., B.A. 

Again. 

May 30, 1912. 

To Whom it May Concern : 

This is to inform you that five or more years 
ago I became acquainted with Brother Tommy F. 
Anderson, and I can say that he was in a horrible 
condition, most especially about his neck, which 
was covered with sores, abscesses, and scars, being 
brought on by scrofula, a tubercular-glandular con- 
dition of the system. It was so bad that he would 
have to resort to the surgeon's knife for relief from 

pus and pain. . . . 

M E S , M.D. 



A "GEED" NECK 161 

There you have it. Take it or leave it, 
as you like! "But why," says one of old 
time, "should it be thought a thing 
Enough incredible with you that God 
should raise the dead?" Why, 
indeed? In these days particularly, wherein 
a monstrous system claiming for its sire the 
Christian Scriptures (though damned by 
any reputable science), is swallowed holus 
bolus by thousands — by millions according 
to Mrs. Eddv. Do not her faithful tell us 
that she herself had not succumbed to that 
nonexistent thing called "death" were it not 
that she spent the last few days in her life 

• ii 99 o 

in error i 

Yet are there left a thousand or two who 
will believe in Him by whose stripes we are 

_ healed — even (at least sometimes) 

"Will He without remedies. God knows it 
Find ^ i s a grievous experience to have a 
bad dollar passed on one, but is it 
not the sincerest tribute to a good, ringing 
silver coin that there are dull lead things in 
plenty to counterfeit it? So while many 
present-day "isms" offer bodily healing in 



162 SCOTTY KID 

their bargain-counter lure of inducements, 
Jesus Christ not infrequently speaks his "I 
will, be thou clean," apart from any human 
intervention. 



CHAPTER XIII 

AS AN EVANGELIST 

It is no great step from mission worker to 
traveling evangelist. It may be even easier 

to carry a fiery message from 
A Voice . 

Crying place to place, than in duller rou- 

tine to feed and nurture Chris- 
tians in a mission. One must have a fund of 
material to dispense a nightly ministry in the 
same place for very long. A hurrying call 
in the night for repentance and good works 
may be sounded while one runs. What 
matters it if the call be couched in the terms 
of last night, as long as it startles into quick 
obedience to-night's hearers? So Tommy is 
"on the road," as the drummers say. 

We read of one experience that sounds 
like an old-time Methodism: "I was asked 
to a place near Graham, Texas, where plans 
were being made for a camp meeting. When 
I arrived several ministers and workers were 

soon busy cutting brush and stumps from a 

163 



164 SCOTTY KID 

clearing, where in a little were to be benches, 
tables, and camp fixtures, including a big 
stove to cook the meals for the whole crowd. 
Afterward the elders met and elected 
T. F. A. as superintendent of the meetings, 
which were to be run for ten days. Mrs. 
Anderson, the baby, and I lived with a well- 
to-do farmer, where we had a chance to do 
much personal work. During our stay there 

every member of that household 
Picking except one was won for the Lord, 

and one of the daughters to this 
day is an active worker for the Lord. Many 
ministers and country school teachers ait- 
tended this meeting. How the farmers and 
their cowboy help crowded to us! In the 
camp grounds were scores of wagons, saddle 
horses, and mules, some coming from ten to 
twenty miles distant. Altogether there must 
have been six hundred people. But the unity 
of the meetings was more wonderful. Con- 
viction rested upon the people. Scores lined 

up for the Lord. I never saw 
A Godly r . . , 

Sorrow anyone so convicted as one young 

lady on her knees by a bench, 



AS AN EVANGELIST 165 

crying so bitterly. I said, 'Sister, what is the 
trouble? Why do you cry so?' She said, 
'Because I am so sorry for my past sinful life 
and I want God to save me/ It was not more 
than a few minutes before the great change 
came, and she was shouting with the joy of 
the Lord. Nor were conversions the only 
sign of power. Christians were deepened in 
their spiritual life. The pastor of the local 
church took on more faith and showed more 
power with God." Brother Tommy alleges 
that here, as elsewhere, the powers of dark- 
ness were strong in opposition. "But Jesus 
and his power rode high over his foes, and 
Texas is feeling and enjoying to this day the 
effects of that good old country camp meet- 
mg. 

Los Angeles: Here it was that Brother 
Tommy had some responsibility in the con- 
duct of the camp meeting. He 
Pitch and , , .* i i 

Power preached sometimes, but was busy, 

so he says, in making announce- 
ments, starting songs, opening the meetings, 
"and seeing that all others were busy on their 
jobs." As to the starting of the songs, we 



166 SCOTTY KID 

pay tribute to the stentorian power of that 
voice, while we deprecate, just a wee bit, 
any praise of its musical qualities. What of 
it? The chief value of a "starter" is to get 
a song on the right pitch and with enough 
volume to get it going and then straightway 
be drowned out and merged into the praise- 
f ul whole. Tommy could do that. He says : 
"More than fifty ministers were in attend- 
ance from Canada, Oregon, Chicago, and 
from foreign fields. I saw not less than 
nine hundred souls come to the Lord from all 
classes — tramps and fallen women, business 
and professional men. Just as grafters and 
bums follow the circuses, so did old Satan 
have his grafters in that camp ground, 
'knocking 5 the preachers, saying the work 
was not genuine. However, the work of the 
Lord did prevail, and the powers of dark- 
ness were made to take to their heels and beat 
it." (Something like this we copied from 
his notes concerning the Graham experience, 
only without the reference to "beating it," 
which is admittedly unconventional treat- 
ment of a religious situation. We rather like 



AS AN EVANGELIST 167 

it.) We should have said of this gathering 

._ ., . that there were some two hundred 
Money Not 

Solicited tents for sleeping purposes and in 

Nor a large tent were supplied meals 

Discussed . fii n i t M 

tor hundreds of people daily. 

The unique thing about the meeting was its 
financing. No collections were ever taken, 
nor were any mentions made of needs at the 
meetings. Boxes were hanging in the taber- 
nacle for free-will offerings. "It was won- 
derful how liberal the people were." Fifteen 
hundred people met every night in the big 
tabernacle. 

Chicago: It was in 1908 that, in company 
with the Rev. William Durham, he did mis- 
sion work where three hundred 
Back Trail P eo pl e every night were in atten- 
dance. It was in this city that he 
had a chance to give his testimony in the 
Great Pacific Garden, where Monroe was in 
charge. Here was heard from the lips of 
many a down-and-out the story of how they 
had been transformed by the Lord. And all 
of this territory was the scene of many an 
exploit of the one-time bum and yeggman, 



168 SCOTTY KID 

Scotty Kid. "It was near Hinky Dinks's 
great booze emporium that I had well-at- 
tended street meetings, where some of the 
dear old greasy coats had a chance to hear 
my testimony. Some business men now got 
it straight that Scotty Kid was no longer 
hunting and fishing for the dimes and 
quarters for free drinks. He is now a hunter 
and a fisherman for the souls of his brothers 
and sisters living in slumdom." 

Winnipeg: Here was a convention in 
1908. "The thermometer was below zero 
As in an d the people were wearing furs 

Genesis like bears. These winds seemed 
like they were dividing asunder 
my flesh and bones, and at times I fairly 
cried because of the cold. But I had to 
stand it. Such a change from sunshiny Cali- 
fornia! Later the Lord made people give 
me felt shoes and furnish me with furs." 
We are willing enough to give the Lord the 
entire credit for that. It isn't done to mis- 
sionary workers where we live, at any rate. 

How is the following for worldly wisdom? 
"Some people gave me some extra cash and 



AS AN EVANGELIST 169 

a r i suggested for me to eat plenty of 

for good Winnipeg apples and wild 

Increasing ducks, and by so doing I would be 
able to stand the weather. This I 
did, and soon began to take on health and 
weight." Furs, apples, and wild ducks, for- 
sooth ! Who ever heard of such a recipe for 
health and weight? When we go to Winni- 
peg we propose to try it. 

Brother Tommy prizes this Winnipeg ex- 
perience for the fine friendship it brought 
him with one of Canada's distinguished men 
of letters and churchmen. This man hum- 
bled himself to draw inspiration from 
Tommy's exuberant Christian experience, 
and together as little children, they used their 
freedom of the kingdom of heaven to wander 
amid its flowers and talk of its beauty. 
Their acquaintance was renewed some years 
after in Hawaii, where one of them stopped 
over on a trip to China. 

The same conflicts and conquests took 
place here in Winnipeg, and on goes Tommy 
to other fields, with just barely money 
enough to get him to the next destination, 



170 SCOTTY KID 

and always supplied in some unexpected 
way, suggesting (whatever it please to you) 
to Tommy the direct hand of God. 

Fort Worth: It was in 1911 that a State 
camp was in session. More than fifteen hun- 
Long- dred people were gathered for a 

Meter ten days' meeting. More than a 

oxo ogy score f ministers from the 
Southern States were on the platform and 
Brother Tommy had the privilege of preach- 
ing four times. "Scores came every night 
to the altar, and every morning there was 
Bible study, while at any hour you might 
hear people holding special prayer in their 
tents for the welfare of the meetings. Meals 
were supplied on the grounds on the same 
free-will plan. It was a beautiful thing to 
hear hundreds sing their blessing over their 
food. This eating on the grounds took away 
the bother of cooking meals at home, and 
there was more time to attend the meetings/' 

A tax on your credence. There is a little 
old lady living yet who could vouch for the 
following story, and although it happened 



AS AN EVANGELIST 171 

Gideon's early in Brother Tommy's evan- 
Fleece gelistic experience, it will serve 

Test as a kind of climax. He speaks 

of it as a loving evidence of God's forgive- 
ness and acceptance of his life of testimony. 

He is alone doing evangelistic work in a 
small California town, and while conducting 
his meetings is the guest of an 
Comci- elderly widow. The morning of 
his expected departure he is tell- 
ing his hostess of his past misspent life, and 
in the conversation the recollection comes to 
him that it was in this very town that he was 
convicted and sentenced for vagrancy while 
beating his way north, of which some ac- 
count is given in the foregoing pages. The 
startled widow exclaims, "Why, my husband 
was the judge that sentenced you." If that 
were not surprising enough, lo! the day of 
the present conversation is clearly proved to 
be an anniversary (the sixth or seventh, we 
have forgotten) of the very day of sentence. 

What do you make of that sort of "coin- 
cidence," if not what Tommy did? 



CHAPTER XIV 

AN INTERRUPTED TRIP TO 
SCOTLAND 

"It was five years after I arrived in 
America that my mother came to Los An- 
geles from Scotland. There she lived with 
my married sister for more than a year, and 
then moved to San Francisco/' 

It appears that the two lost all they had in 
the earthquake fire in the way of clothes and 
The "Far personal effects. The youngest 
Country" son (at that time Scotty Kid) 
Neglect Q £ course p a id no attention to his 

mother, not so much as even to write a letter. 
It is ever so with the sons in the "far coun- 
try." It is not until they "come to them- 
selves" that they so much as think of mother 
or father. Such thoughts, if they intruded, 
would be instantly banished, because serious 
reflection is synonymous with unhappiness 
in the "far country," where the sole ambition 

172 



AN INTERRUPTED TRIP 173 

is to banish care. We know. We boarded 
there for some years. 

"But mother still prays for this black 
sheep. He is to her a son, just as much as 
the others, and, say! it seems she loves that 
prodigal." The marvel of that never dies, 
though the story is well-nigh two thousand 
years old. 

"Well, the night I got converted her 
prayers were answered, and one year later on 
A "Call" God gave me a definite call into 
to the the ministry, [you will under- 

Ministry s t a nd that it was not the cut-and- 
dried ecclesiastical kind he refers to] and 
qualified me and gave me many souls for my 
hire. Aye, and he supplied all my needs, and 
all the congregations and missions felt I was 
in my right calling. During this time mother 
was in San Francisco and I wrote to her 
often and visited her too. Say! you should 
see what a happy mother I had. It seemed 
that the good news of my conversion brought 
not only joy but strength and made her feel 
younger. When she and I talked together 
of the Dear Master we fairly wept for joy. 



174 SCOTTY KID 

"One year later I had a sum of money 
given me, and I felt that I might take a trip 
to Scotland with my mother to see our old 
home town and kinsfolk. I had not been 
there for sixteen years. Besides, when I got 
there I expected to do some mission work. 
I was already packed up and ready to start 
to New York with my mother. For the week 
previous to the start I had been preaching in 
Oakland in a mission, while mother was in 
San Francisco across the Bay. So I took the 
ferry to San Francisco two days before we 
would leave, so that I might look after 
mother's baggage. When I arrived at my 
sister's, where my mother was staying, she 
opened the door when I knocked and took 
me into a side room, whispering, 'Tom, your 
mother is very sick. She became suddenly ill 
this morning and she can hardly speak. The 
doctor says to keep everything quiet/ 

"It was a stroke of paralysis all down her 
left side. I cannot express how I felt when 
I saw my poor old stricken mother. It 
seemed to me that I loved my mother more 
than any of the others. I was her youngest, 



AN INTERRUPTED TRIP 175 

and she called me her baby. When I ap- 
proached she recognized me and made signs 
with her hand in the way of welcome. She 
shed tears when she could not make me 
understand her by means of the voice. She 
kept looking heavenward, as though she 
meant to say, 'God understands me, if my 
boy cannot, and his ways are best. 5 Think- 
ing of my plan to take her to Scotland, the 
last words she ever said were, 'Man proposes 
but God disposes.' It was a sad sight. I 
knew that mother was about to die, so I went 
and canceled our railroad tickets, as I felt 
I would need ready cash for the expenses 
soon to come, for the rest of my brothers and 
sisters were poor. Well, mother was sick for 
three or four days, and the last of it all I 
sat by her side and spoke to her about heav- 
enly things and sang hymns, all of which 
seemed to please her. I asked her if she 
knew that her peace was made with God, 
and whether she was ready to meet her Re- 
deemer. By motion of her hands and lifted 
head she signified 'Yes.' It seemed strange 
that this one-time black sheep was the only 



176 SCOTTY KID 

one of the family qualified spiritually to stay 

by mother as she was entering the Heavenly 

City. I say it very meekly, giving God all 

the honor. 

"We were speaking of the light of the 

City, the last subject on which I spoke to her. 

I then kissed her and said I hoped, 
"My Ain 
Gountrie" ^J God's grace, to meet her there. 

She soon became unconscious and 

died. I took all the railroad money and 

buried her. It paid all the expenses. It 

seemed that it was not God's good time for 

me to go to Scotland." 



CHAPTER XV 

BROTHER AND SISTER 
ANDERSON 

Now, what sort of a wedded helpmeet 
would you have for such a fellow? Mind 
. you, the eugenic people would 

quityor have none at all. With regard 
Provi- f or the nex t generation, how could 

such a man marry? Aye, if it 
were the Scotty Kid now, the position of the 
challenger is well-nigh incontrovertible. But 
it is the new-born, well-born Brother Tommy 
that we are considering, and he says that 
God showed him and a young woman doing 
mission work where he was (He showed them 
simultaneously, mind you!) that it was not 
good for them to do mission work singly. If 
there is any place for naturalistic theories in 
matters of private inspiration, here looks to 
be the place. Under the circumstances — we 
will tell them and you can judge for your- 
self — the Lord might as well have the direct 

177 



178 SCOTTY KID 

credit instead of some such naturalistic de- 
vices as "natural selection," "propinquity/' 
etc. However, why cavil? Here is the 
story : 

The present Mrs. Anderson was born in 
Oklahoma and was an active mission worker 

To the * n a m ^ ss i° n °f ^e out-and-out 

"Greeks" sort (which we need not name) 

Foolish- an( j jj. was j^pg j. Q v j s -|. j a ii s hog. 
ness; to . 

Us— We pitals, and to give tracts and hold 

Keep Our street meetings. It was in 1907 
Hands Off , , . ° . , 

that this young woman, with an- 
other of her age, an ex- Salvation Army cap- 
tain, felt called of God to go to California to 
a certain town to give a definite message. 
Of the validity of that call we have nothing 
to say. It was the teaching and experience 
of that particular mission that people should 
expect and follow definite leading of that 
sort, so her people were not surprised and 
put no obstacles in their way. These two 
claimed that they were provided with means 
to make their trip without any solicitation on 
their part, and that subsequently upon arriv- 
ing at California their wants were supplied. 



BROTHER AND SISTER 179 

Be that as it may, they landed in Los An- 
geles first, that astonishing Mecca of all sorts 
of pilgrims. They worked in missions there 
where big things were in progress in the way 
of nightly conversions, thence to Whittier 
and on to Tulare. Here their path was not 
strewn with roses. Whatever may be said 
of the sanity, reasonableness, and risks of 
going on strictly "faith lines," it takes stern 
stuff to pursue that road with any show of 
consistency. The weaklings had better sheer 

off; they must fall by the way- 
Adventure s ^ e anyway. Let no fools cackle 

their scorn of any sort of adven- 
turers who go up that highway of holy enter- 
prise. There are great fields of undiscovered 
country beyond, and commonplace souls 
hardly venture from their own doorstep. 
Still, we can but shrink from the cost of the 
endeavor, with pity for the pain. 

Here are two young girls in a strange 
town, believing in their message, though no 
High one e l se did. Were they deluded? 

Pressure Who dare say? Their money was 

gone; they knew no one in the 



180 SCOTTY KID 

town, but they believed that God would sup- 
ply their needs. Theirs were such simple 
basic needs too. They are hungry, and while 
walking the street they see in the road a 
fresh loaf of bread that has fallen from a 
baker's cart. "Although very hungry, they 
are ashamed to pick it up. This was a test." 
Now, Tommy, what can you mean by that? 
A "test" forsooth? Of hunger, pride, or, it 
may be, a conscientious regard for the 
baker's property? 

But, anyway, they are compelled to seek 
work in a raisin packing house, and all that 
first day all these girls had for breakfast, 
lunch, and dinner was raisins. 

Such labor as this may be very defensible 
on Pauline grounds, but doubtless seemed 
very like a lapse to these knights 
"Credit °f faith-errantry. Night comes 
System." and with it a need for lodging, 
Program which must be obtained on credit, 
as also meals until pay day. Can 
this "credit" business be called leaning on 
the "arm of flesh," we wonder? If so, how 
have we all leaned there, till some of us have 



BROTHER AND SISTER 181 

well-nigh lost the confidence in the very 
existence of any such beings as angels ( God's 
ministering spirits) save those human "mes- 
sengers" we can sense. 

Stifling our propensity to moralize, the 
story runs that they worked for a few weeks, 
preaching on the street at night, though 
many attempts to discourage them were 
made by fellow roomers in their boarding 
house. It certainly did not appear sensible. 
Besides, it was cold at night, so that they 
had to take the heavy floor rugs to pile on 
the bed, as they had brought nothing with 
them from warm Phoenix. We find in our 
notes the sententious comment that "it made 
resting rather uncomfortable." 

There was money enough saved up finally 
to take them to Fresno, where there was an- 
other mission of their sort, with enough to 
do; and hire enough, too, in the shape of 
needed things for the worthy laborers. Then 
comes Stockton, and after that Sacramento, 
and here Brother Tommy comes back to his 
place in the story. He was doing most of the 
preaching in that mission at the time, and 



182 SCOTTY KID 

was no stranger (through the medium of 
mission reputation at least) to these young 
women. There was no occasion for him to 
fly out of Sacramento because these feminine 
auxiliaries came, was there? After a few 
weeks and he is called to Chico. How futile 
to deny the right of Miss F. E. D. to be 
called there too ! It is too late to remonstrate 
anyway. She went to Chico. Here is where 
Double ^e impression was made on the 

Harness minds of those two young folks — 

Extolled i. i j j. j 

simultaneously, you understand. 

Note the sum total of it: "It is not good 
to be single in the work." (Now we do re- 
member our faults this day. We never asked 
Brother Tommy what became of that other 
young woman. We fancy that she "just 
naturally" faded out of the story.) 

A word as to the ceremony. It took an 
old Negro man who was impressed with the 
By the need of helping, to get sufficient 

Brook cash to supply the license fee. 

The groom was the modest pos- 
sessor of $1.50 at the time of the marriage, 
and the wedding banquet was after this 



BROTHER AND SISTER 183 

fashion : In a back room, just after the wed- 
ding ceremony had been performed, stood a 
table near an open window. (Now if you 
are expecting a raven to feed this prophet 
and his wife, we will try and not disappoint 
you.) Upon this table was laid a platter 
covered with a clean napkin, under which 
were a chicken dinner and a nice big frosted 
cake. This dinner was cooked and presented 
by our good old Negro mammy neighbor. 
Two quite sable ravens, while we are about 
it! She was the wife of the good old man 
who supplied the license money, and her 
name was Powers. 

Do the eugenists ask concerning the chil- 
dren of this union? There are 
Babies* » two of them — beautiful, healthy 
children, with a glorious, unham- 
pered future ahead of them. 



CHAPTER XVI 

IN HONOLULU 

Of the polyglot population of Honolulu, 
perhaps the least hopeful from an economic 
B N point of view are the few Porto 

Means Ricans. That is to say, they came 

"Show" with little capital, material or 
mental, and have acquired very 
little since they came. Brought to the Is- 
lands to promote the sugar industry, not a 
few of them have left the plantations and 
have drifted to Honolulu, for much the same 
reasons that congest our large cities on the 
mainland. Religiously they were almost en- 
tirely let alone. Their coreligionists, the 
Catholic Portuguese, seemed to have no 
interest in them, nor did the Roman Church 
in general pay them any attention. 

Here, in 1911, is where Brother Tommy 
came in. He was on his way to China and 
stopped off for reasons that may have been 
partly financial before they were "provider 

184 



IN HONOLULU 185 

tial" — but suppose we do not allow any pri- 
ority to either element. 

In one of the most "submerged" portions 
of the city there was a shack of utterly shift- 
less and riotous Porto Ricans. 
Reform Their children did not go to school 
and scorned anything much in the 
way of clothing. The institution of marriage 
had been long since lost sight of; they were 
living "huikau," as the Hawaiians put it 
when they want to call domestic relations 
"mixed.'' Now, the scientific reformer 
would go at them with a number of beauti- 
fully remedial agencies. If he could not se- 
cure for them a "new grandmother" (con- 
cerning which requisite Billy Sunday pays 
his compliments) , he might supply the "clean 
shirt." Then there are free milk for the 
babies, a district nurse- — after the house has 
been torn down by the Board of health, the 
family being first evicted — and some dancing 
classes. What Tommy and his people did 
"The Weak soun ds as foolish as the seven- 
Things of day trip around the Jericho walls, 
e or and almost as effective. It was 



186 SCOTTY KID 

perhaps somewhat before Tommy's arrival 
that two simple-minded, quite illiterate men 
of his brotherhood began to visit every night 
that temple dedicated to squalor. They got 
down on their knees and prayed — and that, 
mind you, in a tongue foreign to the inmates. 
At first the kneeling men had things thrown 
at them, a similar "collection" to that of- 
fered to Stephen after his notable sermon. 
Then a perfectly unaccountable thing hap- 
pened, certainly not easy of explanation 
Cleaning save *° *^e well-trained, modern 
Up the rationalist. These poor, neg- 
enements l ec tedL, utterly careless people be- 
gan to do a number of things all at once. 
While they started to take some notice of 
this praying business, interest was awakened 
in them to clean up their house and clothe 
themselves as decently as they might. 
Drinking began to stop till it ceased quite 
entirely. Parents of quite large families 
sought marriage certificates. In a word, 
that whole offensive little community was 
transformed into a colony of most devoted 
attendants on evening meetings that were 



IN HONOLULU 187 

evangelistic of the most pronounced sort. 
Such "settlement" work challenges your ex- 
pensive modern plant. Can you beat it? 

Somewhere in this process Brother 
Tommy happened along, and it was here that 
he began his study of Spanish, and he quite 
naturally fell into the leadership over this 
little flock. By this time quite a group of 
Spanish-speaking people had been brought 
together, and the next thing was to get some 
A kind of a meetinghouse. "So," 

Gathering says Tommy, "we went to the 
Place Government Building and told 

the commissioner that we wanted a piece of 
land for mission purposes. So he grants us 
a piece near the U. S. Experiment Station. 
We got $40 from the Porto Ricans (it seems 
a marvelous fortune when one considers the 
extreme poverty of this people) and about 
$25 from friends in town." Then members 
of the Hawaiian Board brought the sum up 
to $150, and Japanese carpenters furnished 
the lumber and the work and did the whole 
job for that sum, because, they said, "It is a 
mission for poor people." It was only a little 



188 SCOTTY KID 

box twenty by thirty, and hot too, as the 
writer can testify. But it was a sacred place 
of worship to those earnest folk, who had 
gotten together in a sort of "carpenter bee" 
and had made the benches themselves. 

Now comes the grand opening and dedica- 
tion and "more than a hundred people 
packed inside, children sitting and sleeping 
on the floor. God did bless, and these brown 
and black faces shone because old things had 
passed away and all things had become new." 

What if even the mission services waned 
in their power and attendance after Brother 
Tommy went to China. Much good came of 
it all, and scattering members took to many 
places on the islands the flame of exalted 
spiritual devotion, to rekindle many another 
little altar. 

This China trip is unique and has much in 
it worth the telling. In a life that had not 
so many bristling out-of-the-ordinary points 
in it, this missionary trip to China could 
hardly escape notice, but somehow it strikes 
us somewhat foreign to our purpose and we 
omit further mention of it. 



CHAPTER XVII 

A SCHOLAR TOO! 

Not of English as yet. That will come in 

time, as we intimated. To get to the Span- 

„ „ ish-speaking people in Hawaii the 

No Easy * -tip 

"Short- language is needed ot course. 

Cuts" to Not ordinary "pidgin" patois will 
do. Brother Tommy wants to 
speak correctly. One or two rather "tick- 
lish" adventures with teachers cause him to 
look in the direction of the correspondence 
course, and few of their many pupils have 
shown more conclusively that they meant 
business. In the first place, to a man like 
Tommy one hundred dollars (the cost of the 
course) is no bagatelle. Then, despite the 
novelty of a talking machine, drudgery can- 
not be totally eliminated from language 
study. There are thirty to fifty words to be 
memorized in one lesson and sometimes as 
many as twelve sentences to be committed to 
memory. The test of proficiency comes 

189 



190 SCOTTY KID 

when the pupil recites back into the records 
sentences made up of the materials already 
presented for mastery. To what rank do 
you think our quondam Irish hobo would 
be likely to attain? Notice that he has to 
write sentences, an exercise which from old- 
school analogy we would denominate " Span- 
ish prose." Thus eye and ear and hand are 
trained by what seems to us to be a most effi- 
cient method, to those really in earnest about 
it. 

We aver that Brother Tommy has a right 
to considerable honest pride which may not 
We Take escape detection in the following 
Off Our quotation from his notes: "I am 
at now in my thirtieth lesson — the 

last of the course. My percentage marks 
have never been less than ninety-six [we are 
willing to admit that at times in our own 
career our marks did fail to reach that low 
level], while eight papers brought me ninety- 
nine." Apart from our own somewhat dam- 
aged scholarly reputation, of which confes- 
sion has just been made, we know other men 
who in the same subject and in the same cor- 



A SCHOLAR TOO 191 

respondence course were satisfied if not com- 
placent with a mark of seventy. So does 
Brother Tommy's head seem to have profited 
by the new birth too. He says: "It is easy 
for me to get along in the everyday talk, read 
and write some, and read some in the New 
Testament. I have a vocabulary of about 
sixteen hundred words, and some may think 
I am well versed" — not many of us, Brother 
Tommy — "but I realize that there is a great 
deal for me yet to learn. So far I do not 
know very much." Surely, but you could 
hardly have given us better proof that you 
would some day. 

It is he that continueth to the end that is 
saved in any line of work. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

FROM PAHOA TO HAKALAU 

Thirty-five miles in extent is a fairly 
good-sized parish. Not that the early mis- 
01d sionaries in Hawaii did not have 

Missionary larger ones. The celebrated 
Trails "Father" Coan of Hilo compre- 

hended a much larger area in his parish, 
while "Father" Lyons thought nothing of 
adding the Hamakua district and the valley 
of Waipio, difficult of access, to his already 
ample field of Waimea. Even the sight of 
the map would make it difficult for you to 
see how much this means, even in the days 
before good saddle trails, not to speak of the 
marvelous space-annihilating Ford. 

Brother Tommy covers ground enough. 
He began with Olaa and some of the neigh- 
Where the boring camps of Hilo, and now he 
Ford goes out in the other direction 

Counts from Hil05 tQ Pepeekeo and Ha _ 

kalrfti. Of course this would be quite a spas- 

192 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 193 

modic and ineffectual thing to attempt with- 
out the machine with which Tommy covers 
his miles. As it is, Hilo is a good place in 
which to live — a base of supplies, meaning 
considerably more than gasoline and tires — 
where there are excellent schools, good stores, 
friendly neighbors, and, more than all, a 
home, which last is perhaps the "Exhibit A" 
of the Christian faith on the earth to-day. 
Brother Tommy would not be much without 
his home, which statement is commonplace 
enough: few men would. Here too he 
studies his Spanish lessons, prepares his ex- 
amination papers for his correspondence 
course, and, practicing on his wife, watches 
his vocabulary grow. 

Hilo is well taken care of in the matter of 
churches and does not need much of his time 
Back to anc * service. There is a meeting 
Jail— by at the jail now and then, and 

vitation B ro ther Tommy is at home there. 
Some remarkable things have happened at 
that jail when Brother Tommy has talked to 
some of the most abandoned of all the pris- 
oners, the Porto Ricans. 



194 SCOTTY KID 

But where he is needed most is at the out- 
lying plantations, where the Filipinos, Porto 
Ricans, and Spanish are practically unserved 
by any church. It will be at once objected 
that certainly the Catholics look out for their 
own, and all these people came 
Catholics? f rom Catholic countries. To 
which the plain answer is that reli- 
gion and the priests have gotten themselves 
in strong disfavor in the minds of most of 
those coming from the Philippines, and the 
Spanish and Porto Ricans on the Islands 
have so far been neglected by the Catholics 
to a large extent. So it is at Pahoa. 

Now, Pahoa is a lumber camp. Not the 
kind of a lumber plant that you have in your 
mind, doubtless. It is hardwood 
Hardwood *hey S e ^ ou ^ there, ohia and koa, 
and it is more than probable that 
these terms may not be so clear to most of 
the readers. Certainly, the terms are not as 
well known as the company would like to 
have them. The ohia is used principally for 
making railroad ties, and now hardwood 
floors of ohia are quite "the thing," partly 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 195 

for their looks, and, what is still more to the 
point, the dread "borer" ants do not eat them 
as they do almost every other kind of wood. 
The ohia grows very plentifully on all the 
slopes of Hawaii, while there are large for- 
ests of koa — a much larger tree, by the way 
— in the vicinity of the volcano (Kilauea) 
and on a belt of the same level nearly all 
around the island. The market for koa has 
not yet been created as the wood deserves. 
Called by some the "Hawaiian mahogany," 
it has been used much in Hawaii for making 
furniture, and for finishing the more costly 
houses. While it takes a wonderful polish 
and is a beautiful hardwood, it is difficult 
and costly to finish because it splinters in the 
planing. 

So much for the wood that makes Pahoa a 
settlement, that literally places it on the 

map ; certainlv, there would be no 
Parasites 

other excuse for the straggling 

row of houses, the labor camps and populous 

school. Garages, too (we saw a brand new 

Cadillac of the latest model in one of them) , 

and stores and even billiard parlors. The 



196 SCOTTY KID 

Japanese and the Filipinos patronize this 
last institution, so that there is money in it 
for the promoters and penury for the Fili- 
pinos. 

When Brother Tommy first visited Pahoa 
he was after the little brown Filipinos. 
There was no place in which to gather them 
and they did not want to be gathered any- 
way. They were spending their leisure time 
crap-shooting and billiard-playing, betting 
on baseball games, and shaking dice. 
Tommy says that he used to go in among 
them and tell them that "they must come 
Filipino an d hear the word of God." Of 
Ap- course he told them this in Span- 

proac es -^ w hich had an old familiar 
sound to them, and they were willing to 
come to the midst of the camp and listen. If 
it rained, they would have to crowd on the 
veranda of some small camp building. Here 
is where Tommy learned what it meant "to 
compel them to come." "They would not 
come out into the main road so we had to go 
after them, or we never would have held one 
service." 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 197 

There were sixteen months of this sort of 

effort, with a folding Estey to help (played 

by Mrs. Anderson), and some- 

_ co ^. times an accordion. The time was 

Backing 

by no means thrown away, you 
may be sure. Doubtless the confidence of 
these people was largely won in this way. 
That grimly earnest, yet humorous face, plus 
the big penetrating voice, must make their 
impression Sunday after Sunday, for a year 
and a half. Aye, the manager of the plan- 
tation was being impressed too. There is a 
commercial value to all this effort in the im- 
proved condition of labor, but it was the 
Scotch pluck of Brother Tommy that ap- 
pealed to the Scotch manager. By the way, 
most of the managers are Scotch, so that the 
Hilo-Hamakua coast is sometimes humor- 
ously spoken of as the "Caledonian coast." 

So the Hardwood Company wants to have 
a part in this welfare work. The manager 
A offers the lumber (hardwood, by 

Hardwood the way, which looks pretentious 
xssion £ or a m j SS i on chapel) and the car- 
penter and a piece of land. That constitutes 



198 SCOTTY KID 

the larger part of the undertaking, so that by 
November 15, 1915, the First Filipino Mis- 
sion on the island of Hawaii is ready for use. 
It is thirty-five by forty-six, and will seat 
one hundred and fifty. But the getting of 
the one hundred and fifty into it is quite an- 
other thing. "We would start and play the 
organ and sing, but they would not come in. 55 
The next step was clearly to go out into the ' 
camps and invite them to come. This was 
done by Brother Tommy, and "they would 
say, 'Yes, we will come/ and probably three 
or four would show up." This was discon- 
certing from every point of view. That 
Brother Tommy's pride was involved, to- 
gether with a much nobler passion, will ap- 
pear from the following: 

"One visiting minister, when he entered 
the mission, said, 'This is a nice building, but 
"Compel where are the people?' I replied, 
Them to 'You wait for about ten minutes, 
Come" J.JJJ j g an( j g e j. ^.j ie con g re g a . 

tion.' " Thereupon he proceeded to go after 
them "Bible fashion," as he calls it. Herein 
does the "compelling" process become mani- 



f f 




5% **£& 



AUDIENCE AT DEDICATION OF THE SPANISH MISSION 
AT HAKALAU, NOVEMBER 5, 1916 




CHAPEL FOR SPANISH WORK AT HAKALAU, DEDICATED 
NOVEMBER 5, 1916 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 199 

fest. The evangelist is not now a "fisher of 
men"; he becomes a "hunter," though it all 
sounds more like a game, a game of "hide 
and seek" that the mischievous brown chil- 
dren are playing, with Brother Tommy in 
the role of "it." "They would hide behind 
Churched doors, under beds, in the bath 

—if house, some up between the ceiling 

Caught and the roof> What fun these 

little brown fellows are having with their 
white preacher!" But when caught they evi- 
dently were willing to pay up their forfeits 
like men. "When we had found from six to 
a dozen, we would march them to the mission 
house and leave them in charge of a mission 
helper." (This helper was often Mrs. An- 
derson, and the "we" referred to compre- 
hends a Filipino helper.) "Then out again 
into the camp in a raid for more droves of 
them. In this way we would collect from 
sixty to eighty-five, which would make a fair 
congregation for the beginning of our serv- 
ice. Most of the message was given in Span- 
ish to be translated into Tagalog." It hap- 
pens that most in this particular camp under- 



200 SCOTTY KID 

stand Tagalog, though this confusion of dia- 
lects makes the Filipino work 
Many 1 especially hard. There are the 

Visayans to be dealt with, as well 
as those of the Ilocano speech. Those of this 
last dialect comprise some of the most enter- 
prising and intelligent of the Filipinos in 
Hawaii, and work for them very particularly 
has hardly begun. It is fortunate that Span- 
ish furnishes at least a gateway to their 
understanding. That is why Brother 
Tommy is working so hard at it. Those 
speaking pure Spanish are numerically in- 
considerable, though they are in his scheme of 
things, as we shall see. 

But to go back to that congregation : they 
seemed to pay good attention, though their 
singing was "terribly out of tune," but he 
accounts for this on the ground that they 
were "raw material." But we cannot free 
ourselves from the suspicion that in view of 
the nature of their invitations, they may not 
have had their hearts in that singing. 

"Many outsiders told us that they were a 
wild people and that they never would be any 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 201 

good; that all the robberies and 
Analogy murders are committed by them." 

All of which Tommy admits, add- 
ing to the indictment that there were "some 
mighty bad ones among them." He goes on 
to prove their worldliness by what seems to 
us as "judging them in respect to meats," 
or, rather, vegetables. He declares that they 
are great lovers of leeks and onions. This 
somehow suggests "Egypt" to us, and we 
wonder whether Brother Tommy was not 
straining at a scriptural parallel, thinking 
of those poor whilom bond slaves yearning 
so for the odorous garlic despite the hard 
service in bricks. 

"So now the Filipinos," says Brother 
Tommy, "planted their biggest crop in leeks 
From an d onions, and all around the 

Garlic to mission house was planted a beau- 
Rose tif ul crop of them." This pointed 

in the direction of good works, so Tommy 
thought; it was far better than weeds. "But 
now" — note the triumph of it — "the leeks 
and onions have been pulled out, and in 
letters of small red flowers 'PAHOA MIS- 



202 SCOTTY KID 

SI ON 9 has been planted, to be seen by all 
passers on the public road, while on the sides 
are fern trees, and some of the bird's-nest 
variety, and roses, and on the edge, a row of 
hibiscus. So now you see the gospel made 
them change from leeks and onions to roses 
and ferns." 

What think you of that proof of the gos- 
pel? Plantation men might not agree. 
From utility to sentiment would spell no pro- 
gression to them. As for us, the Egypt- 
Caanan figure appeals, aside from some in- 
herent prejudice against garlic. 

"Also in front of their own houses they are 
planting flowers and trees where before only 
weeds and wild grass grew." This 
Fruits"— * s conclusive. The same fruit of 
the gospel has appeared among 
the Japanese in the Islands, of which the Ha- 
waiian Board records have much to tell us. 

But there is a nobler fruit still: "Now they 
come to services. We hunt for them no more 
under beds and behind doors and between 
ceilings and roof." It is either a new habit 
or a new taste, or both. There is evidently 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 203 

something in that mission for which they 
come. So much is clear. 

"We have services every Sunday morning. 
The Sunday school is conducted by Mrs. An- 
derson (with the assistance of a charming 
young woman who lives in Pahoa, and whose 
part-Hawaiian antecedents make it possible 
for her to assist in the Hawaiian tongue for 
the Hawaiians who attend) , and the children 
are made up of Japanese, Hawaiian, and 
Filipinos." As for the adult Filipinos, many 
of them have been baptized, and they make 
good Christians and love to study their 
The "Best Bibles. "More than forty New 
Seller" Testaments have been sold to 
Here Too them, and one man told me 
that he had sold more than twenty-five dol- 
lars worth of small dictionaries, and spellers 
and letter-copy books at this one place. 
There is a night school conducted four times 
each week, and from fourteen to twenty are 
studying English. We lost one of the best 
of this company, who used to help me in 
hunting up his countrymen. He is now pre- 
paring himself in the Hawaiian Board 



204 SCOTTY KID 

School to preach the gospel to his own 
people." 

In general, Brother Tommy regards the 
Filipino outlook as very hopeful: "Whereas 
Appraisal every month many of them are ar- 
of rested for gambling and various 

i ipmos crimes, hundreds of them are pre- 
paring to become citizens of the United 
States, studying the constitution, settling 
down into business as plumbers, tailors, 
hatters, bookkeepers, salesmen, court inter- 
preters, officers in the national guards, etc," 
In this last connection, it should be said that 
in the late competitions for trophies among 
the various companies of the national guard, 
the best-drilled companies on both Oahu and 
Hawaii were Filipino companies. When it 
is noted that there are nearly five thousand 
enrolled in the national guard in Hawaii, 
comprising companies of Anglo-Saxon 
Americans, as well as pure Hawaiians, the 
success of the recent comers competing under 
conditions that are less favorable, must 
mean something in their favor. 

That they take on other American ways is 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 205 

not to be wondered at, and one often wishes 
they were not so apt pupils in picking up our 
American vices. They are even intermarry- 
ing with the Hawaiians, with what interest- 
ing result in the way of race blending it is too 
early to speak. Certainly, in ways of living, 
Possible anc * even in appearance, there is 
Race- no great dissimilarity in the two 

Blend races. We recently came across 

one of them preaching acceptably in the 
Hawaiian tongue, which he had picked up 
with more than ordinary fluency in his brief 
stay in the Islands. In that same Hawaiian 
church there were a number of Filipinos re- 
ceived into membership, a good deal due to 
his influence, although similar conditions 
exist in other parishes. 

Another interesting phase of work done 

among the Filipinos, with which Brother 

. Tommy is connected to some de- 

vs. gree, is the citizenship teaching, 

K.-of-H. first instituted under the auspices 
Citizenship of ^ Y M c A as ^ Qut _ 

growth of a league for that purpose. It is 
marvelous how they are responding, large 



206 SCOTTY KID 

numbers of the national guard especially tak- 
ing out naturalization papers. Evangeliza- 
tion seems to them to go appropriately hand 
in hand with approaches to American citizen- 
ship. Would that later no disillusionment 
need to arrive! Americanism and Chris- 
tianity convertible terms? What enlight- 
ened patriot among us, however much he 
might yearn for it, dare claim it to be true? 
We once heard a famous Japanese evangelist 
say he once thought so. It was a rude shock 
when he came to America and found out that 
the Sermon on the Mount was not operative 
in America — nor yet in any country — be- 
cause Christ was not King there. But the 
Filipinos have been with us but a brief time, 
and they welcome, especially on Maui, teach- 
ing on American citizenship and Kingdom- 
of-Heaven citizenship simultaneously. Or, 
to be more exact, as one of our evangelists 
put it, they would not have the citizenship 
talks unless they had religion first. What a 
heaven-ordained order! If national alle- 
giance could brook that order, say in Europe, 
to-day, what might we not expect? 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 207 

Hakalau Work 

As one sails along the Hamakua Coast en 
route to Hilo, he passes some dozen or more 
plantations, stretching in beauti- 
Sugar ftd g reen U P to the forest line, and 

reaching down to the high bluff, 
two hundred or more feet, from which issue 
a superb succession of waterfalls to the sea. 
The several mills for grinding and sugar- 
making are either perched on this bluff or 
nestle down in the deep gulches which quite 
frequently mark the division line between 
the plantations, Hakalau is one of these 
companies some sixteen miles from Hilo. 

Here Brother Tommy started a work 
which is about two years old at the present 
writing. Here is where the Spanish lan- 
guage is a "stone to kill three birds/' as 
Tommy puts it. That figure looks inapt 
enough, since it is a "bread" with which he is 
"enlivening" the Spanish, Porto Ricans, and 
Filipinos. It is not often that the three na- 
tionalities are to be found in the same planta- 
tion in any numbers. In a Spanish camp 
"the children were the noisiest bunch I ever 



208 SCOTTY KID 

saw in my life." "When I entered the camp 

there was a great shout, f El 

in a Title maestro de salvacion viene!'— 

meaning 'The teacher of Salvation 

is coming.' " 

He has this to say of this same "bunch," 
to which we can attest, since we saw them and 
heard them: "But in spite of their 
Soap yells and dirty faces, how sweetly 

they did learn to sing English and 
Spanish hymns!" Just why he regards a 
dirty face as a bar to singing we have not 
learned of him. It was Artemas Ward who 
said he once knew a man who was the best 
player on a bass drum that he ever heard, 
and yet he did not have a tooth in his head. 
The humor lies in the absence of relation. 

"Our services interrupted many a cock- 
fight, as well as family dances. These are 
popular diversions among the Spaniards. 
For a long time the older people would not 
attend our open-air or veranda meetings, but 
recently they have been changing and come 
quite freely. To be sure, they are very indif- 
ferent to religion of any kind. As they are 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 209 

good housekeepers, steady workers on the 
plantations, they are well pleasing to the 
sugar companies. The Portuguese at the 
camp are mostly Catholics and celebrate the 

feast of the Holy Ghost. Here 
Believe it? there is much music and dancing 

and drinking of wine. Often the 
celebration ends up in a drunken row. Gen- 
erally, from two to four police attend to 
arrest the drunken fighters and to protect 
the others at the celebration who have not in- 
dulged in the 'dago red.' (This last is a 
sweet wine, quite palatable and not expen- 
sive. It is known to the trade as unripe, or 
untempered, and as it contains a large per- 
centage of alcohol and is taken down like 
"Dago water, it effects fearful results in 

Red" and the shape of a "drunk/') "When 
mnity we p ass one Q £ ^hese gatherings 

some of the people, when drunk (sometimes 
even when sober), shout out, 'Diablo' 
[devil]. The Porto Ricans love to gamble 
and drink, but there are some very good 
ones among them and steady workers. But 
the gospel is winning its way. The Span- 



210 SCOTTY KID 

iards invite us in to eat and drink coffee. 
They give us ham and eggs and sometimes 
chicken soup with bread in it, red beans, and 
chili peppers. 

"Finally after two years of outdoor work, 
the manager of the plantation has erected 
for us a chapel twenty-eight by thirty-eight, 
and we have been given the spot of land on 
which it stands/' 

As we are drawing this story to a con- 
clusion, the word comes to us that Brother 
Partaker Tommy and a goodly company 
of the from Hilo have just dedicated the 

rmts new chapel. On the first Sunday 

of November, 1916, gathered a party of 
pastors, including the eloquent leader of the 
First Foreign Church of Hilo, and the 
pastor of the Hilo Portuguese Church. Ad- 
dresses were made by a number, and good 
solos were rendered by visiting friends. 
Brother Tommy read the Scriptures and 
made the notices in Spanish, and then took 
his place among the loquacious Spanish wo- 
men to prevent their interrupting the serv- 
ices with their frank discussions and ques- 



PAHOA TO HAKALAU 211 

tions. The plantation manager and his 
friends were at the dedication exercises, and 
over a hundred from among the various na- 
tionalities interested. The building will be 
used freely Sundays for church and Sun- 
day school, and during the week for social 
purposes and night school. 

Pepeekeo, a plantation not far away, is 
another center of the Brother Tommy activ- 
- ities, and the plantation author- 

ities have promised him a building 
which will doubtless soon be in the course of 
construction. So spreads the fine contagion. 
Death and disease have no exclusive rights 
in the realm of "epidemics" : righteousness is 
"catching." Given a man, filled with the 
Spirit-life of the "from-above born," and we 
have life springing up on whatever arid soil 
he walks, bursting into flame from any dead 
cinder he touches. God pity us that there 
are so few men! 



212 SCOTTY KID 

L'ENVOI 

Taken literally, this term "L'envoi" is a 
sort of "send off." To be sure, it comes at 
the end of many narratives, but ought to 
imply no complete finish. On the the other 
hand, it might properly be equivalent to "un- 
finished business." 

How could we write "Finis^ to our little 
narrative of Brother Tommy, who has by no 
means reached the forty-year mark? By the 
grace of Him who hath begun a good work 
in him, there ought to be a score of good 
years ahead to increase the marvel of the new 
birth story. 

Hence we wish him Godspeed to a trium- 
phant Finis. 

As to the merit of his life so far, "Honor to 
whom honor is due." 



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